Although five months have elapsed since Stefan Hersh, second violinist of the Chicago String Quartet, was asked to leave the ensemble because of artistic disagreements with the other three members, the fallout is still being felt. Certainly it provided an interesting subtext to the quartet’s first subscription concert of the season Wednesday at the DePaul University Concert Hall, where young Jasmine Lin took her place as Hersh’s replacement.
His departure precipitated a chain of events at the School of Music that has resulted in DePaul’s terminating the quartet’s residency. CSQ first violinist Joseph Genualdi; violist Rami Solomonow; cellist Christopher Costanza; and Hersh continue to teach in the string department, where Genualdi and Solomonow are tenured faculty members. Principal sponsorship of the ensemble has shifted to the Chicago Chamber Musicians, of which the CSQ has been a component since the quartet’s founding in 1995.
Donald Casey, dean of the music school, said DePaul will continue to support the quartet on a limited basis through contributions made to the Chicago Chamber Musicians over the next three years. The music school also will relieve Genualdi, Solomonow and Costanza of one-quarter of their teaching load so they can continue to devote time to the quartet.
This compromise arrangement appears to have been designed to appease those DePaul music faculty who opposed the CSQ residency and resented the academic release time and financial perks enjoyed by its members, which they felt created a double standard. Casey said that the CSQ did not fulfill its mandate as a recruiting device for string students and that this, along with input from the faculty, led to his decision to end their residency. Still unresolved, however, is the question whether that residency was ever intended to be an ironclad, long-term contract, as the CSQ members apparently believed.
The best string quartets tend to be resilient organisms, and nothing steels their collective resolve better than the hurly-burly of change. There was every indication Wednesday that the CSQ is prepared to set academic politics and disagreements aside and get on with its business. The Curtis-trained Lin, a former assistant concertmaster of the Cincinnati Symphony, is a sensitive musician and gifted violinist. She seems well equipped for the CSQ’s established sound and playing style.
Indeed, the uncertainties of ensemble that can result from a new player were nowhere evident in Mozart’s A Major Quartet (K.464), Shostakovich’s 13th Quartet and Brahms’ Quartet in C minor (Opus 51, No. 1). The Shostakovich, one of his bleakest, most powerful late scores, was a marvel of controlled intensity. The Brahms walked an electric high wire of gutsy emotional abandon. The performances were loudly applauded by an audience that included Hersh. Peace reigns on the chamber music front, at least for now. Classical review
