This past Sunday marked the beginning of South Mountain’s annual series of Chamber concerts on their charming bit of woodland property off of Route 7 on the way to Pittsfield. The series was first organized nearly 100 years ago, decades before Tanglewood got off the ground, and the Association that presents the series is old-fashioned enough not even to have an e-mail address or much of any on-line presence to speak of; to reserve tickets one has to send a check by mail.
The series regularly hosts some of the most celebrated names in American chamber music: This year the Julliard and Emerson Quartets will be featured, among others, in the coming weeks. But what a delight to see a particularly young group of fine musicians opening this year’s series as the already-acclaimed Escher String Quartet, all the more so because they have none of the pretension of suavity, and hipness that marks too many young players these days, who seem self-conscious to come off as new and fresh, when any true lover of music knows that freshness and vitality of playing come only with an unambiguous sincerity and devotion to the music. Though I could have done without the Berg Lyric Suite, there is no doubt in my mind that the Escher String Quartet are fine musicians whom I look forward to hearing again in the future.
The first offering of the afternoon was Haydn’s Opus 50 Quartet in D major called, “The Frog,” because the composer fancied that the three repeated notes, played on separate strings, which are the basis of the last-movement finale’s principal motif, resembled the croaking of a frog.
Haydn has become something of an extinct being in the symphonic repertoire, a fact much to be deplored, and probably attributable to the superficial desire of orchestral directors to use all their brass, and percussive toys. Yet Haydn has continued to occupy a central position in chamber music thanks to his much beloved string quartets (incidentally Haydn invented the genre) of which the last four are probably the most listened to works by the classical master today.
It is somewhat of a rarer occasion to hear a Haydn quartet not marked opus 76 or 77, of which there are innumerable masterpieces. One of these is Haydn’s Opus 50, “The Frog,” which The Escher Quartet played with great enthusiasm and with a lightness and polish that did not come at the expense of a deep, resounding tone.
The most marvelous thing about Haydn’s quartet writing, certainly evident here, is its combination of a great inventiveness, even playfulness, from which Beethoven probably nourished his own proclivity for jesting, and an exquisitely clear counterpoint of lines never equaled by any of Haydn successors in the string-quart idiom. If one were expecting a rollicking 3rd movement minuet to dance to — let us use this movement as an example — we are given instead a rather ambling air for both singing and dancing. Haydn’s finales are usually jaunts, and there is no exception here; but this is not one of those Rondos that simply lets one two-step out of the hall with a good tone firmly implanted in one’s ears; Haydn’s creative modulations, in re-presenting the opening “croaking frog” motif keeps one enchanted.
Escher’s first violinist Adam Barnett-Hart prefaced the final offering before the intermission, Berg’s Lyric Sweet, by trying to draw affinities between it and the Haydn quartet; to put it in a way much more flattering to Berg than he deserves, between the so-called “First” and “Second” Viennese schools.
To be fair, the Escher quartet played the “Lyric Suite” as if it could have been a work by Haydn, but, unfortunately for Berg, and even more so for the listener, the only thing the Berg shared with the Haydn was its expert scoring for string-quartet ensemble.
But, while Haydn tried to write music, and in fact wrote it rather brilliantly, the entire point, for Berg, is his exposition of colors and rhythms, with sometimes a fleeting glimpse of form. Far from liberating the composer, a 12-tone architecture actually limits what he can do. Though I suppose, if you like 12-tone music, this is probably one of the finer examples you will find, for my part, I was left feeling sick and lethargic, and mid-way through began to dwell on the possibility that I had worn too many layers of clothing.
After the intermission, we were treated to Dvorak’s Viola Quintet in E-flat Major Op. 97, for which the Escher Quartet was joined by the Emerson Quartet’s superb violist Lawrence Dutton. But, the Escher Quartet’s own Pierre Lepointe had every bit as sumptuous and full-bodied a tone as his guest, as did Escher cellist Dane Johansen, whose solo turns in the Dvorak were much to be savored.
Dvorak’s strength in this piece is development. The first movement exposition, in particular, carries one along, readily enough, with robust and thickly stated folkloric themes, which can frankly sound a bit wooden. The scoring here strikes one as the chamber music equivalent of Schumann’s orchestrations. The string lines seem to disperse a little more naturally, and we can hear the lines more clearly in the development, which contains some very fine counterpuctual writing.
Dvorak only really finds his muse, however, in the enchanting third-movement larghetto: Nothing is forced, and no one is bludgeoned; the composer is quite at peace, and gives us a melody of great serenity and ease.
The Finale is almost Beethovenian in character, and causes one to think, should not Dvorak have given up on his study of folk music and written from the heart? Its fruits can indeed be ravishing.
For a schedule of South Mountain concerts this fall, check out the South Mountain web site, or call 413-442-2106.