Mostly Mozart Festival 2006 (II): Members of Kremerata Baltica, Kaplan Penthouse, Lincoln Center, New York City, 05.08.2006 (BH)

 

 

Shostakovich: Two Pieces for String Quartet, Op. 30b (1931)

Gubaidulina: String Quartet No. 2 (1987)

Mozart: String Quintet in G minor, K. 516 (1787)


So what a beautiful concept this is: a late-night, hour-long, intermission-less concert for the nocturnally inclined, in one of the most beautiful settings in New York, Lincoln Center’s Kaplan Penthouse on the tenth floor of a building across the street from Avery Fisher Hall. After stepping off the elevator, you enter a room filled with small cocktail tables with candles, bottles of water, and glasses of wine, all surrounded by three walls of floor-to-ceiling glass overlooking New York City.  Seating roughly 230 people, the room made a stunning setting for an equally stunning recital by members of Kremerata Baltica prior to their two evenings in Avery Fisher Hall.

Shostakovich wrote his Two Pieces for String Quartet in a single evening, using an aria from Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk for the Elegy, and the Age of Gold for the Polka.  About eight minutes long in total, the first encapsulates the composer’s wan sobriety, while the second is a witty bit of acid.  The Kremerata players could not have been more committed, particularly in the springing pizzicato sections of the polka.

An obsession with a single note – a unison "G" – forms the genesis of Sofia Gubaidulina’s haunting second string quartet.  Her language can be unsettling: unison figures hover, shatter into pieces and then spout off into all directions. Scarcely ten minutes long, the work uses harmonics, glissandi and accents in a buzzing furor of lines that converge, diverge and then return to that pesky "G." This is quartet writing as timbral exploration, a fluttering portfolio of sounds one can hardly imagine – until a mind like Gubaidulina’s decides to report back on what she has heard.  I was reminded of a beautiful quotation from the recent Diane Arbus show, "I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them." This piece rewards an almost maniacal intensity, and the chattering fervor of the Kremerata foursome, lit by rows of flickering candles at the late-night hour, made for a positively eerie aftertaste.

The day after this recital, I wrote about it to a friend in Nacogdoches, Texas (near Austin, for those outside the United States), a friend who has made it his mission to acquire recordings of every work that Mozart ever wrote.  He mentioned that this String Quintet is not only one of his favorites by the composer, but one of his favorites, period.  It is easy to see why, with the artist at his most thoughtful, moving from a softly anguished beginning to an unexpectedly sunny conclusion.  With Gidon Kremer joining the group as the fifth whom Mozart occasionally taps as soloist, this sublime performance could have been a model demonstration of why the intimacy of chamber music often communicates in subtle ways that larger pieces simply cannot.  The range of emotions produced by the Kremerata musicians, helped by an extraordinarily keen dynamic range, was astonishing.  If my listening companion for the evening was in rapture over the two Shostakovich bits, and if the mesmerizing Gubaidulina was my personal favorite, I suspect the Mozart left virtually everyone in the room with a bit of a blissful glow.

 

 

Bruce Hodges