SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Mendelssohn, Herrmann, and Tchaikovsky: American String Project, Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 14.5.2009 (BJ)

Mendelssohn: String quartet in f minor, op. 80
Herrmann: Echoes
Tchaikovsky: Serenade for strings 

The American String Project is actually a conductor-less string orchestra that exists just for a week once a year. Now in its eighth season, the ensemble was created under the artistic leadership of Barry Lieberman and his wife Maria Larionoff: he is a professor at the University of Washington who frequently plays bass as a substitute in the Seattle Symphony, of which she is the concertmaster.

Most of the music played in a series of three concerts spaced over four days is chamber music arranged for the larger forces of a string orchestra, mostly by Lieberman himself. The fifteen players assembled for what amounts to a mini-festival are all front-rank, and in many cases front-desk, performers from orchestras around the United States and Canada. Besides Lieberman and Larionoff, this year’s roster included Milwaukee Symphony concertmaster Frank Almond, Eriko Sato of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and the celebrated solo violinist Stephanie Chase, who contributed her own arrangement of Falla’s Seven Spanish Folk Songs to the week’s repertoire.

The week’s opening concert began with two taxing and dark-hued works, Mendelssohn’s F-minor Quartet, Op. 80, and Bernard Herrmann’s Echoes, also originally for string quartet. Both were played with consuming passion and an extraordinarily rich and satisfying sound-palette, realizing both the emotional desperation of Mendelssohn’s late masterpiece and the introverted melancholy of Herrmann’s single-movement piece.

The program was originally to conclude with another work of powerful inward concentration and drama, Tchaikovsky’s third and last string quartet, set in the awkward key (for string players) of E-flat minor. But since the violinist who was to have led the performance had had to cancel for family reasons, the composer’s altogether sunnier Serenade for Strings was substituted. Played with much charm and no less virtuosity, it provided a delightful contrast to the music we heard before intermission.

It would be a mistake to consider even Lieberman’s highly effective arrangements as permanent replacements for the quartets they are based on–the intimacy of the string-quartet medium has a value that is unique and irreplaceable. But the conversion to a larger format also brings rewards of its own, casting new light on music we thought we knew through and through. This was indeed a revelatory evening, and the audience clearly loved every minute of it.

Bernard Jacobson

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