{"id":24754,"date":"2015-01-10T14:43:24","date_gmt":"2015-01-10T19:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=24754"},"modified":"2015-01-10T14:43:24","modified_gmt":"2015-01-10T19:43:24","slug":"concert-review-the-juilliard-string-quartet-keep-beethoven-modern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2015\/01\/10\/concert-review-the-juilliard-string-quartet-keep-beethoven-modern\/","title":{"rendered":"CONCERT REVIEW | The Juilliard String Quartet Keep Beethoven Modern"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Juilliard
Juilliard Quartet in Toronto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Juilliard String Quartet played at the Jane Mallet Theatre on Thursday evening \u2013 bringing with them a chilly program for a chilly January night. The program was part of Music Toronto\u2019s Contemporary Classics series.<\/p>\n

The New York-based Juilliards have a well-earned reputation for tackling tough modernist scores. Earlier this year, they completed the cycle of Elliott Carter quartets that they began in the 1990s. They\u2019ve also championed quartets by Milton Babbitt, Stefan Wolpe and Roger Sessions, among others.<\/p>\n

So Anton Webern\u2019s Five Movements for String Quartet<\/em>, and Shulamit Ran\u2019s String Quartet No. 2, which followed, were right up their alley. Beethoven\u2019s Op. 135 String Quartet, which concluded the program, wasn\u2019t exactly contemporary music \u2013 but it fit well with the \u201cclassics\u201d side of the Contemporary Classics label.<\/p>\n

Before the quartet put bows to strings, Music Toronto\u2019s composer-advisor Jeffrey Ryan offered a brief introduction. In his comments, he noted that the Webern piece still sounds like new music, more than a century after it was written.<\/p>\n

Ryan intended his remark as compliment \u2013 but I believe his observation neatly underscored a fundamental problem. Yes, this music does sound \u201cnew,\u201d but only because its musical language remains culturally alien and unassimilated. I suspect Webern\u2019s Five Movements for String Quartet<\/em> will sound just as bafflingly unfamiliar to most listeners in another 100 years.<\/p>\n

The performance got off to a shaky start, with the Juilliards having to restart the first movement, due to a tuning problem in the first violin. The second attempt was more successful, as the quartet gave the movement a detailed yet restrained reading. And so it went: the ensuing movements were played with a precise, tight-knit fragility.<\/p>\n

Ran\u2019s String Quartet No. 2 (subtitled \u201cVistas\u201d) is quite dissonant, yet less atonal than the Webern. Indeed, there are passages when specific pitches are forcefully established as central. Constructed according to a classical model with a four-movement form, the quartet is cyclical, with ideas from several movements recurring in the last.<\/p>\n

For most of its 25 minutes, it\u2019s a difficult piece \u2013 difficult for the players, certainly, but also for the audience. There\u2019s an \u201cextreme\u201d quality about this music, and remarkably it seems to inhabit opposite states simultaneously. At the same time it\u2019s dispassionately calculated and raging with angst.<\/p>\n

The Juilliards dug into the score with a full-throttle commitment. They\u2019ve been playing this piece a lot this season, and their thorough knowledge of it was immediately apparent. In the first movement, Ran\u2019s stridently independent treatment of the four instruments called for an individualized virtuosity from the musicians, and they rose to the occasion. The second movement is lyrical and linear, and that\u2019s how the Juilliards played it \u2013 yet also with dramatic edges on the ends of phrases. The third movement, a kind of scherzo, was performed with manic agitation. And the finale was a return to the fierce, angular counterpoint of opening movement.<\/p>\n

Although an impressive succ\u00e8s d\u2019estime<\/em>, this quartet ultimately bounces of the cultural wall the way so many modernist works do. I don\u2019t think it will ever find much love in the world of classical music. (And I see no injustice in this, by the way.)<\/p>\n

After the two modernist works, Beethoven\u2019s Op. 135 Quartet held forth the promise of a warmer, friendlier kind of music. But that\u2019s not really how the Juilliards played it. Rather, their approach was a reminiscent of the Ran quartet that they had just performed. To be sure, they played with plenty of energy and with great attention to detail \u2013 but their tone was steely, and sometimes just plain harsh.<\/p>\n

Colin Eatock<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Juilliard String Quartet played at the Jane Mallet Theatre on Thursday evening \u2013 bringing with them a chilly program for a chilly January night. The program was part of Music Toronto\u2019s Contemporary Classics series…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":24757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[118,52,57,58],"tags":[1798,2314],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/01\/JSQLin_hires.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-6rg","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24754"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24754"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24761,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24754\/revisions\/24761"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24754"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=24754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}