When the Vermeer Quartet leads off a series of concerts, it sets the bar very high for whoever follows. Still, the artists scheduled for Northwestern University’s 2001 Chamber Music Festival seemed up to the challenge.
The Vermeer opened the fifth festival season Friday at Evanston’s Pick-Staiger Concert Hall. Along with its core players–Shmuel Ashkenasi and Matthias Tacke, violins; Richard Young,viola; and Marc Johnson, cello–were two musicians of the same high grade, violist Li-Kuo Chang and pianist Andrea Swan.
The program of Haydn, Franck, and Mendelssohn was not exactly adventuresome, but it was masterly crafted music, beautifully played. Every fine quartet can produce a balanced, blended sound, but the Vermeer makes a specialty of it; the listener does not hear lines being played together, but a single sound in multiple dimensions.
Haydn’s C Major Quartet, Opus 74, No. 1, set a new direction for him–and for other quartet composers including Beethoven. It was intended for a large and eager audience in London, so it’s on a more dramatic scale than his earlier quartets. It seems more like a concerto for a star soloist than music for a salon.
The soloist in this case was Ashkenasi, who handled the soaring, swooping decorations with polished ease. In the acrobatic outer movements his playing combined solidity with airiness–one of those seeming contradictions that fine players manage so easily. The music is brisk and bustling, with Haydn’s built-in skyhook–some buoyant element in the music that pulls it upward.
Cesar Franck’s Sonata in A Major was originally written for violin, not cello, and piano. As performed by Johnson and Swan, it seemed the composer could have gone either way; there’s a lot to be said for the depth and warmth of the cello sound. The piece takes more than skill. It requires something like tact. To present-day listeners it’s like a lot of Victorian art, overdecorated and prettified. (One instance: I wish Franck had let us hear that gorgeous tune of the finale played straight, just once, before he gussied it up with all the “echo” business.)
On the other hand, the piece does have other Victorian qualities, good material and excellent workmanship. Johnson and Swan made the most of those qualities. They played with plain beauty of sound and a minimum of emotional quivering.
Swan played her torrential accompaniment flawlessly, as usual. Johnson, curiously, seemed a little outweighed by the accompaniment. Possibly the quartet player’s skill at blending has its down side for the soloist.
Violist Chang joined the ensemble for Mendelssohn’s Quintet No. 2 in B-flat, giving extra richness and size to the sound. The work is full of sprightliness and energy–Mendelssohn trademarks–and these players made it fizz.
The opening Allegro sounds like mischief: a succession of songlike tunes that sound proper enough, but with buzzing, trembling accompaniments. The “Andante scherzo” alternates a folk-songy minor tune and a crisp, delicate waltz. Ashkenasi made powerful, nuanced songs of his solos in the Adagio, and the Finale was a quick-stepping, joyous march with a madrigal in the middle.
There are four more courses to come in NU’s chamber musicfeast. The Vermeer was a succulent appetizer.
