Chatham, N.Y. — It really shouldn’t matter that all members of the Van Kuijk Quartet were born in France. But they want it to matter, and so it does. The quartet plays everything from Beethoven to Bartok at the highest level, winning competitions and awards for doing so, but they have a special affinity for French composers. They make no secret of it when they shoot a video in Paris along the Seine, with the Eiffel Tower carefully framed behind them, and they made no secret of it when they appeared at the PS21 Center for Contemporary Performance in Chatham, N.Y., on Saturday, March 1. In fact, they announced from the stage what they were up to: indulging in the music of Claude Debussy for the sheer pleasure of it. The sold-out crowd in PS21’s black box theater was clearly glad of it.
Saturday’s program started with Debussy’s String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10. Maybe it was simply the power of suggestion, but the performance seemed definitive—authoritative in its execution and emotionally authentic in its expressivity. Such precise and nuanced performances are what make it possible to channel a composer, and these musicians were up to the task.
Two more Debussy works followed: a piano piece adapted for solo harp, “La fille aux cheveux de lin,” and “Danse sacrée et danse profane” for harp and strings.
Following intermission, the harp took center stage, along with harpist Parker Ramsay, who often performs solo as a headline act. Ramsay is known for his contributions to both classical and contemporary music. He is also known for his innovative approach to the harp and for pushing the boundaries of the instrument by collaborating with composers to premiere new works.
The 92nd Street Y calls Ramsay “the artist pushing the harp—and the repertoire for it—into the future.”
It was easy to tell on Saturday that Ramsay had given deep thought to every note he played. It is as if he memorizes a piece before seeing it on paper. He is good at explaining it, too, being a professional educator.
For this program, Ramsay performed a suite of movements from Nico Muhly’s “The Street” (Fourteen Meditations on the Stations of the Cross). Muhly’s music has a storytelling quality that naturally complements Ramsay’s sensitivity and sleight of hand at the harp. His performances of these movements invited listeners into the composer’s sound world as well as the librettist’s narrative.
The program concluded with Gabriel Fauré: A selection of melodies, arr. Gildas Guillon for string quartet; and André Caplet’s “Conte fantastique” (after Poe) for string quartet.
The playing on all of these pieces was uniformly precise and exquisitely nuanced.
