On Thursday afternoon I went to Paul Hall to hear a performance by the Calliope Quartet - consisting of Tianyang Gao and Julia Glenn, violins; Molly Goldman, viola; and Hélène Werner, cello - that was part of this term's Honors Chamber Music program. This was actually the third occasion on which I had heard the ensemble perform this season.
The program opened with the Quartet No. 3 by Philip Glass, part of the soundtrack he composed for the 1985 film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. In Schrader's film, which I have to admit I haven't seen despite my admiration for Mishima's talent as a writer, several different types of instrumentation were used. This was appropriate as the author himself employed different literary styles within his own work. For example, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea is sparely written while Mishima's final work, The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, is lush and decadent. In the film, the string quartet accompanied flashbacks to the writer's early life. The use of this form, together with black & white photography, was reportedly intended to add a sense of austerity to these scenes. But the six-movement piece is more than a series of soundtrack accompaniments - each movement contributes to the integrity of the final work and when played together form a chamber piece that stands on its own merits. Its distinctive sound is vintage Glass and instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with his work. As performed here it provided an interesting contrast to the classical and romantic quartets that followed.
The next work was Beethoven's Quartet No. 11 in F Minor, Op. 95 (1810), subtitled the "Serioso" by the composer himself. What strikes the listener immediately is how different this quartet is in its intensity and willingness to experiment from those that had preceded it. In such innovations as the abrupt transitions in the first movement and the exploration of distant harmonies (F minor to B minor) in the third movement, the piece anticipates the bold departures of the late quartets. Beethoven himself was aware of the radical nature of this work and wrote of it: "The Quartet is written for a small circle of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public." And indeed the listener often feels he or she is sharing the composer's private thoughts on the nature of music itself as he prepared to leave his heroic middle period behind him and move on to the more abstract compositions that were to follow. The work is compact, the shortest of Beethoven's string quartets, and moves forward with a concentrated passion appropriate to its name. In a burst of emotion Beethoven appears in the final movement to free himself once and for all from the influences of Haydn and Mozart only to take just enough time in the light and cheerful coda for one final glance backward as if giving a nod and a wink to the old masters.
After intermission the program ended with Schubert's Quartet No. 13 in A Minor, D. 804, Op. 29 (1824), nicknamed the "Rosamunde" after the play by Helmina von Chézy for which Schubert had written the incidental music which he here adapted in the second movement. The work, along with the Quartet No. 14 written immediately thereafter, represents the composer's greatest achievement in the genre. But characters of the two works are a study in contrasts. While No. 14 is stark and foreboding and ends in a frenzied tarantella, the No. 13 is far more reflective and, especially in the final movement, is filled with a sense of gentle melancholy.
This was the third time I've heard the Calliope Quartet perform this particular work by Schubert, and I found it very interesting to try to judge the ensemble's progress in mastering its intricacies. I was, in fact, very impressed by the musicians' virtuosity in performing all three works on the program.
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