The New York-based Escher String Quartet made a formidable debut within the Harmony Chamber Music Society sequence yesterday afternoon within the Harmony Academy’s dry-but-articulate, steeply raked enviornment theater, producing a wide range of sound signatures appropriately specific to every composer on this system of Beethoven, Janáček, and Brahms, incomes fairly an enthusiastic response. After listening to the ensemble in 2011 at Kneisel Corridor in 2011 [reviewed HERE], I instantly inked them for the Harvard Musical Affiliation’s personal concert events, and I received to know the people by 4 subsequent bookings there. The gamers’ insatiable repertorial curiosity might hardly be discerned from the meat-and-potatoes programming yesterday, however their dedication to unanimous perfection of ensemble manifested itself from the beginning. The foursome’s insistence on a grueling rehearsal schedule had apparently led to modifications in personnel over time, however the brothers Speltz—Brendan on violin and Brook on cello—have seamlessly entered into the agreed-upon however spontaneously emotional mindset originated by first violinist Adam Barnett-Hart and violist Pierre Lapointe.
Starting with Beethoven’s String Quartet in B-flat Main, Op. 18 No. 6, the Eschers performed the room with a direct immediacy and conversational articulation. Barnett-Hart coherently yielded his pinpoint focus each time the highlight widened to incorporate his colleagues, because the foursome passionately argued inside educational confines within the Allegro con brio first motion. Within the major-minor alternations of the Adagio, the gamers savored a well-aged port wine of the deepest ruby, with large complexity on the sonic palate, this motion being extra sung than spoken. The cello appeared to be affirming and preaching a transcendental view of nature totally acceptable to the composer and the Harmony sages.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, although not a lot of a music-lover, acknowledged Beethoven’s significance. “The music of Beethoven,’’ he wrote, “is claimed by those that perceive it, to labor with vaster conceptions and aspirations than music has tried earlier than.’’
The nuanced responses concluded in a plucked sigh. Then we joined the gamers for a delightfully galloping offbeat trip—herky-jerky in a refined conveyance, and considerably ambivalent as to meter besides because the Scherzo gave strategy to the Allegro Trio part. The advanced La Melinconia: Adagio. Allegretto quasi allegro nearer discovered the quartet alert to Beethoven’s genius for distinction and shock. They started with a profound, nearly insufferable restraint, slowly blooming into cosmic sphere, earlier than frolicking in a Mozartian minuet of a mud-luscious spring. All through we loved lived-in taking part in with swells and accents completely thought-about and artfully weighted. Immortal harmonies sang out from receptive silences, as spring anticipated winter. The race to the end matched pace with smiling class.
Cellist Brook Speltz arrange Leoš Janáček’s String Quartet No. 2 “Intimate Letters” with an account of cigarette smoke snorting from the f-holes in moments of anger and angst. The ensemble directly adopted a grittier mien for the ‘startling chills and blinding warmth’ which Speltz had advised we might expertise; the idealized however reluctant beloved, within the guise of Lapointe’s decidedly un-shy and gleamingly intense viola, rejected the primary violin’s love choices. The opposite voices commented with slashing depth made extra vivid by momentary repose in Æolian harp quietude. The oceanic ice of trills in harmonics melted because the Andante – Con moto – Allegro resolved in a swelling fermata chord in doublestops. Adagio – Vivace, the oxymoronic designation of the second motion completely describes and alternation of penance and turbulence. After the craving and deeply aspiring opening, cellist Brook Speltz issued his romantic mission assertion, after which shrieking, and extra relaxed anticipations of conjugal success regularly vied on this cliffhanger motion. As pleasurable—and downright terrifying—temper swings continued apace within the Moderato – Andante – Adagio third motion. The Eschers might have interaction in a deceptively easy ring across the roses with a tragedian’s opposite and foreshadowing pessimism. The gamers boiled over in a witches’ brew earlier than resignation gave strategy to close to comfort or exhausted afterglow. The shut of this of almost tonal, manic depressive, hormonal effusion begins with one thing of a people dance and aria wherein the primary violin asserts and the viola resists. Plenty of violent tutti chatterings conveyed the ambivalence of these flouted affirmations. Grouchy tremolos got here throughout with theatrical menace in a dance of demise; the hoped-for reconciliation by no means materialized. The gamers introduced us vividly into Janáček’s mise-en-scene with completely apt kinds of coloration, texture, and have an effect on.
After which we obtained a mature and absolutely discovered traversal of Brahms’s String Quartet in C Minor, Op. 51 No. 1, accomplished simply a few years earlier than that grasp escaped from the shadow of Beethoven with the publication of his first symphony. The Escher String Quartet took on a darkish burnish of ravishing depth with molten colorations and ripe, pleading expression. The melding of impeccable group dynamics and various articulations with outpourings of individuality characterize the group’s distinctiveness. The second motion evoked a chorale of despair, as the primary violin and viola clung to a trellis of sonic blooms, intertwining and ripening. In motion three, Allegretto molto moderato e comodo, cellist Speltz sounded aristocratically vocal. Then the golden-hour trio lilted in essentially the most echt Viennese method, recalling the younger Brahms’s piano works. Albeit with Brahms’s refined cries to Clara and his uncommon minor ending, the foursome closed in commanding tones, advocating artfully for the symphonic Brahms to return… “White Warmth…High of the World.”
