You might not guess that Sibelius was a violinist, to judge from the stark textures and peculiar doublings that sometimes mark its five movements. So, after intermission, was Sibelius’ D-minor String Quartet (“Voces intimae”).Īgain, the SLSQ dug into the music – and what strange music it often is. This was, like the Adams, music and a reading full of fire and life. There was devotion to spare in the third and, in the finale, slashing dissonances rubbing up, with abandon, against playful galumphing. The ensemble delicately spun out the tendril-like melodic gestures of the first movement and reveled in the earthiness (not to mention the rhythmic and metrical ambiguities) of the wild scherzo. Sunday’s performance, with its clean textures, total lack of sentimentality, and brisk tempos, made the score sound as fresh and, well, strange as anything the SLSQ played all afternoon. Until then, it made a good first impression, if not (like Adams’ First Quartet) an overwhelming one.īefore the Adams came some “real” Beethoven, in the form of the F-major String Quartet no. But, ultimately, the Quartet requires more local performances and (hopefully soon) a recording to give one a better sense of its strengths and weaknesses. On first glance, too, it’s a highly engaging score. Now, whether or not the Second Quartet adds up to more than the sum of its parts remains, after just one hearing, an open question It is, clearly, a crafty Beethoven remix and the ways Adams assimilates the older composer’s language into his latest style are fascinating. And, while much of the music is jaunty fun, the introspective passages – the short, questioning pauses of the first movement, and the lyrical opening of the finale chief among them – were played with warmth and tenderness. Its athleticism posed them no challenges: from cellist Christopher Costanza’s opening, rhythmic phrase to the cool, serene C-major final cadence, this was a performance that slipped into a groove early and never fell out of it. On Sunday afternoon, the SLSQ made spirited work of the piece. Now, whether or not the Second Quartet adds up to more than the sum of its parts remains, after just one hearing, an open question. Intimations of bluegrass fiddling seem to appear out of the haze of the finale. Sul ponticello articulations crop up unexpectedly. Spiky rhythmic patterns bounce between the players. Throughout, Adams’ fluency regarding writing for the ensemble is on full display. 111, though things quickly ramp up and a jaunty “Energico” leads to a vigorous conclusion. The second starts with a rather expansive elaboration of a theme from the first movement of op. The first is almost entirely extroverted, with a strong pulse underlying its various transformations of the Beethoven excerpts. These references are frequently recognizable in and of themselves, though they often set off in wild and unpredictable directions.Īdams cast the piece in two movements which, together, last about twenty minutes. 110 and 111 piano sonatas and the Diabelli Variations. Like much of his previous music for that ensemble (2007’s First Quartet and 2012’s Absolute Jest), it draws heavily on the example and music of Beethoven’s late period, quoting, in particular, some short phrases drawn from the op. While the latter is an expansive orchestral treatise, full of angular gestures, dense harmonies, and complex rhythmic layerings, the Quartet is, if not simple Adams, then at least fairly straightforward and compact. The Adams Second Quartet could hardly be a more different piece than Scheherazade.2. It shared the bill with two similarly quirky quartets, one by Beethoven and the other by Sibelius. Lawrence String Quartet (SLSQ) brought his 2014 Second Quartet to Concord Academy for the last concert of the Concord Chamber Music Society’s current season. At the beginning of March, Leila Josefowicz gave a blazing account of his “dramatic symphony” Scheherazade.2 with the Boston Symphony. It’s been a good month if you’re a Boston-area fan of John Adams. Photo: courtesy of Concord Chamber Music Society.
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