Orion Quartet Performs Mendelssohn, Kirchner and Beethoven

I rode the subway down to the Village on Thursday evening to hear the Orion Quartet perform the last of their four recitals this season at Mannes.  These are the only performances sponsored by the school that I still attend since it moved last year from its old home on 85th Street.  I feel it's worth enduring even a ride on the C train to hear an ensemble of this quality.  It helps too that their programs are so well thought out.   Thursday was no exception - the featured composers were Mendelssohn, Leon Kirchner and Beethoven

The evening began with Mendelssohn's String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 13 (1827).  It's no coincidence that this piece was composed in the same year as Beethoven's Op. 131, played in the second half of this recital.  Though Beethoven's late quartets had not yet come to be appreciated as the masterpieces they were, and for that matter would not be for many years to come, Mendelssohn was already able, at only age 18, to discern the greatness within them.  He studied the scores and then implemented a number of elements from them, including their cyclic structure, in this his first quartet (the Quartet No. 1 in E flat major was actually written two years later though published first).  It is surprising then that Mendelssohn's work, a conscious tribute to a beloved master, sounds so utterly different from anything Beethoven himself ever composed.  Instead, the Quartet No. 2 is one of the most lyrical pieces ever written, an expression of passionate longing that perfectly typifies the Romantic temperament.  One has to remember that Mendelssohn, however precocious a craftsman he may have been, was at the same time still a teenager.  It's obvious listening to the work that he was in love at the time he wrote it.  Whether this was an actual full blown love affair or a momentary infatuation is beside the point.  The work, which incorporates in its score the title of his song Ist es wahr?, is thoroughly sentimental in character and it is really this that makes it so appealing to listeners today.  It represents one of those rare occasions when Mendelssohn put aside his carefully cultivated genteel persona and allowed his audience a glimpse of the individual who stood behind it.

The next work was Kirchner's Quartet No. 3 for strings and electronic tape (1967).  With all due respect to Kirchner, this piece, which actually won the Pulitzer Prize, can only be described as bizarre.  This is what happens when a talented composer attempts to reinvent himself and sound "up to date," in this case by interspersing with instrumental music electronic sound effects created on a synthesizer.  Unfortunately for Kirchner, the sounds are exactly the same as those which we now associate with low budget sci fi films from the 1950's.  (Think Earth v. the Flying Saucers and you get the idea.)  The instrumental music is at times intriguing but the bothersome noises that intrude upon it keep the listener from being able to fully appreciate it.  Not surprisingly, Kirchner gave up working with electronic music soon after having completed this piece.

After intermission, the program concluded with a performance of Beethoven's String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131 (1826).  Beethoven's late quartets were not composed in the order of the opus numbers assigned them.  The Op. 131 and the Op. 135 were not part of the original commission from Prince Galitzin and were the last to be written.  Much is always made of the fact that early nineteenth century listeners did not know how to react to Beethoven's late quartets, but the truth is that even today it's hard to know what to make of them.  It's a world away from Mendelssohn's Op. 13.  The late quartets constitute the composer's last testament, but what exactly was he trying to express in them?  Almost two hundred years have passed and, despite innumerable learned articles, we are still no closer to the answer.  These works, the Op. 131 paramount among them, will always be a mystery.  The best we can do is to listen as closely as possible and to admire Beethoven's stunning achievement that transcends musical technique to offer a truth that cannot be put in words, that slips away even as one tries to explain it.  The Orion Quartet's performance of this work on Thursday evening was masterfully executed, and it provided the audience an invaluable opportunity to appreciate one of the greatest musical works of all time. 

This was the first time I'd attended an event at Mannes's new auditorium on Fifth Avenue at 13th Street.  Like the rest of the building, it's done on a grand scale.  There is no raised stage, but the portion of the floor allotted to performance space is huge.  The important thing, of course, is its acoustics.  They turned out to be excellent if a bit dry.  I could hear each instrument distinctly.