THE ALEXANDER STRING QUARTET Press Sunday, December 24, 2006 THE YEAR IN MUSIC ANTHONY TOMMASINI OOKING back over the year, I Canadian Opera Company in Toronto offered an looked vibrant and acted with abandon. But what tried to compile a list of highs imaginative production with each opera staged mattered more was that she sounded vocally and lows in classical music. But by a different director, conducted vibrantly by secure and confident, singing with unforced L Richard Bradshaw. But the big news there was power, shimmering sound and supple phrasing. call me irresponsible; I simply found the company’s splendid new home, an inviting, Imagine this punishing role actually sung, not too many exciting and meaningful sleek and intimate house that seats just 2,000. shouted. achievements to dwell on the 6. This month at Zankel Hall, the French pianist disappointments. So here are some of The Shostakovich centennial Pierre-Laurent Aimard brought his staggering the most memorable events: technique, searching intellect and fantastical was celebrated by the Emerson 1. On paper a Britten evening may not have imagination to a program of 24 études that was seemed the most daring way for the English String Quartet at Alice Tully itself an artistic creation. It was fascinating to tenor Ian Bostridge to begin his Perspectives Hall and the Alexander String hear musical resonances among varied works by series at Carnegie Hall. But that program, in Ligeti, Debussy, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Zankel Hall in March, presented this Quartet at the Baruch Scriabin, Bartok and Liszt. As a last-minute adventurous artist in Britten’s mercurial song Performing Arts Center with surprise, Mr. Aimard also played the premiere of an impetuous, finger-twisting piano piece, cycle “Winter Words,” on poems by Thomas competing cycles of the 15 Hardy, and in the neglected Canticles, five “Caténaires,” by Elliott Carter, who was there to take a bow on his 98th birthday. unorthodox works for voices and instruments on quartets, performed in texts ranging from Jacobean metaphysical poetry chronological order. It was a 7. Happily, the year brought new recordings to to T. S. Eliot. Mr. Bostridge gave haunting, assuage a loss. In July the incomparable mezzo- deeply expressive and keenly intelligent special privilege to hear the soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson died at 52. performances. dynamic Alexander Two recordings released this year will enhance her legacy while enriching the repertory with 2. The Shostakovich centennial was performances in Baruch recent works by her husband, Peter Lieberson. A celebrated by the Emerson String Quartet College’s intimate 176-seat highlight of a Lieberson recording on the Bridge at Alice Tully Hall and the Alexander label is a live 2004 version of his quizzical and String Quartet at the Baruch Performing auditorium. Seldom have these harmonically spiky “Rilke Songs,” with Ms. Arts Center with competing cycles of the anguished, playful, ironic and Hunt Lieberson accompanied by the incisive 15 quartets, performed in chronological pianist Peter Serkin. And just this month masterly works seemed so Nonesuch released a live 2005 recording of Mr. order. It was a special privilege to hear profoundly personal. Lieberson’s “Neruda Songs,” settings of five the dynamic Alexander performances in love sonnets by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Baruch College’s intimate 176-seat 4. Peter Gelb, the new general manager of the This is music of subdued intensity and aching auditorium. Seldom have these Metropolitan Opera, deserves credit for his beauty, sublimely performed by Ms. Hunt anguished, playful, ironic and masterly overdue, energetic and multifaceted public Lieberson and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, outreach efforts. And bringing Anthony conducted by James Levine. works seemed so profoundly personal. Minghella’s visually arresting, highly stylized Sadly, there were other notable deaths as well, 3. Two notable new productions of Wagner’s production of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” to including several legendary women of opera: the daunting “Ring des Nibelungen” came in close New York in September was a bold way for Mr. sopranos Birgit Nilsson, Anna Moffo, Elisabeth succession. In July, the Bayreuth Festival in Gelb to inaugurate his tenure. Schwarzkopf and Astrid Varnay, as well as the Germany introduced an engrossingly modern supremely gifted, if often chaotic, conductor and staging by the playwright Tankred Dorst, which 5. The dramatic soprano Deborah Voigt had a stage director Sarah Caldwell. Gyorgy Ligeti, a presented the gods, dwarfs and mortals as souls career milestone at the Lyric Opera of Chicago composer who loomed over the last decades of forgotten by the world who keep trying to relive with her first staged performances of the title the 20th century, also died. Together, these their stories. The production was dominated by role in Strauss’s “Salome,” beginning in artists gave us countless highs. the organic, intense and insightful conducting of October. After a long period of adjusting to her Christian Thielemann. Then, in September, the slimmed-down postsurgical body, Ms. Voigt Robert Besen, Director | 508 First Street, Suite 4W | Hoboken NJ 07030-7823 T 201-386-8565 | F 201-386-8564 | [email protected] | www.BesenArts.com THE ALEXANDER STRING QUARTET Press Wednesday, May 3, 2006 CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK String Quartets Reveal the Private Shostakovich By Anthony Tommasini lmost by default, the string quartet anguished and dangerously modern at a with premonitions of death and perhaps is the most intimate of musical time when the Soviet Union’s cultural thoughts of suicide. In a letter to a friend, Agenres, intended for performance in police were cracking down on musical written days after he had finished the work, intimate spaces. The music is laid out in expression. he called it an “ideologically deficient four voices, one instrument per voice, and quartet that nobody needs” and described it the string instruments are all of the same The intimacy of the music as his own memorial. The quotations from sound world. Even when Haydn creates came through with enhanced other works in this score (the Cello Con- mischief in his string quartets, there is certo No. 1 and several symphonies) seem a something tender and wistful about the power and poignancy in the summing up. humor. And when Bartok goes to the dark Alexander quartet’s vibrant, Shostakovich, who was not a string side in his quartets, the pulverized, vehe- probing, assured and aptly player, did not compose his first quartet ment and dissonant music somehow sounds until 1938, when he was 32. But by his last confessional. volatile performances. decade (he died in 1975, at 68), the genre So it’s not surprising that Shostakovich, Publicly Shostakovich was forced to was at the center of his output. The last five the most inscrutable composer of the 20th write paeans to the state, like the cantata quartets date from those years. century, seems at his most revealing in his “The Sun Shines Over Our Motherland.” The Alexander String Quartet, based in 15 string quartets. Some commentators are Privately he wrote these quartets, which San Francisco, is celebrating its 25th cautious about seeing these works this way, were not performed until after Stalin’s anniversary. The first violinist, the among them Eric Bromberger, who wrote death in 1953. The Fifth teems with astrin- excellent Zakarias Grafilo, joined in 2002. the excellent program notes for the Alexan- gent harmonies, bouts of anger, obsessive The other members are Frederick Lifsitz, der String Quartet’s survey of the repetitions and a waltz movement so long- second violinist; Paul Yarbrough, violist; Shostakovich quartets. That five-concert winded and convoluted that you don’t for a and Sandy Wilson, cellist. They have series ended on Monday at the Baruch Per- moment trust its graceful pose. recorded the works for Foghorn Classics; forming Arts Center. Sometimes the quartets seem revealing the first volume was recently released, the It can be no coincidence that despite themselves. The Quartet No. 6, in second is imminent. Shostakovich wrote 15 symphonies and 15 G, was composed in 1956, during the first On Monday night the Alexander players string quartets. But Mr. Bromberger is cor- month of Shostakovich’s marriage to his showed understandable signs of fatigue rect that it oversimplifies things to see the second wife, a captivating party official. after their weeklong Shostakovich mara- symphonies as Shostakovich’s public His troubled first marriage to Nina Varzar, thon. Occasionally their concentration statements and the quartets as his private a physicist, ended with her death in 1954. slipped, notably in the tragically elegiac ones. After all, there are inconsolable pas- The Sixth Quartet is sunny: the music of a final work. But the chance to experience all sages in the symphonies and episodes of middle-aged man in love with a young 15 quartets played in chronological order genial Neo-Classicism in the quartets. wife, it would seem. Yet despite its playful with such intensity and engrossing Yet given the nature of the genre, character, it is structurally rigorous and commitment in a perfect chamber music Shostakovich could not help letting his elusive. Did Shostakovich subliminally hall was a privilege. deepest feelings come out. It goes with the known better? Within three years the mar- The Emerson String Quartet, whose territory. The intimacy of the music came riage had ended in divorce. justly praised recording of the Shostakovich through with enhanced power and The renowned Eighth Quartet, in C quartets was released six years ago by poignancy in the Alexander quartet’s minor, was composed in 1960, when Deutsche Grammophon, is nearing the vibrant, probing, assured and aptly volatile Shostakovich went to Dresden. The city midpoint of its five-concert survey of the performances, given in an ideal hall for was still blighted from the devastating 15 works at Alice Tully Hall, which, at chamber music that seats just 174.