Above: the Michelangelo Quartet
~ Author: Brad S Ross
Friday November 9th, 2018 - It was an evening of superb classics Friday night at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall. Visiting from Europe was the Michelangelo Quartet, the distinguished string quartet best known for performing and recording numerous string quartets by Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart, among others. The group comprises the violinists Mihaela Martin and Daniel Austrich, the violist Nobuko Imai, and the cellist Frans Helmerson. Due to illness, however, Austrich was substituted by the young violinist Stephen Waarts — an established soloist in his own right. Nothing was out of place when the performers took the stage, however, and they played with the uncanny familiarity one could only expect from the most seasoned professionals.
Above: Stephen Waarts
The concert opened on Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in D-major, “The Lark,” composed in 1790. The Father of the String Quartet certainly lived up to his reputation with this stately entry from the second set of “Tost” quartets, named in honor of the Hungarian violinist Johann Tost who aided Haydn in finding a publisher for the works. The quartet begins on an upbeat Allegro moderato throughout which Mihaela Martin’s first violin aptly imitated the work’s titular bird. This was followed by a tender Adagio cantabile, a brief Menuetto: Allegro, and a spirited Vivace that brought the work to its close. Its warm and familiar tonalities being completely emblematic of the Classical era, this was an elegant and pleasing way to start the evening.
Bringing the music forward nearly a century, next up was the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana’s String Quartet No. 1 in E-minor, “From My Life,” composed in 1876. Written during the composer’s waning later years, a period which also produced the famous set of symphonic poems Má vlast (“My Fatherland”), the semi-autobiographical “From My Life” reflects a period of great sadness in the Smetana’s life as his hearing slowly began to fail. The quartet opens on a haunting Allegro vivo appassionato, an expression of the romantic spirit of his early years. Next is a pulsing Allegro moderato à la polka, reflecting the composer’s fond memories of dance. Frans Helmerson’s moving cello solo opened the bittersweet Largo sostenuto, a tribute to the happiness of first love. Finally, an excited Vivace, celebrating his “discovery of the essence of national music,” brought the quartet to a close with effectively quiet coda — a tragic reflection of the composer’s impending deafness.
After a short intermission was the final item of the program: Béla Bartók’s String Quartet #1 in A-minor, composed between 1908 and 1909. Like his Violin Concerto No. 1, the string quartet was partially inspired by the composer’s unrequited love for the young Hungarian violinist Stefi Geyer. Geyer did not return Bartók’s feelings and thus rejected the concerto, which went unperformed until after both of their deaths. Written in the shadow of this rejection, the First Quartet is cast in three somber movements played without pause. It opens on a dark Lento, which the composer himself described as “funeral dirge,” that incorporates the same four-note motif for Geyer that had appeared in the First Violin Concerto. This was followed by a brooding and pulsing Allegretto leading to a pensive and meditative Introduzione. The quartet closed on an agitated and sinister Allegro vivace that ends on three unresolved fortissimo strikes, bringing the work to its unsettling conclusion.
The Michelangelo Quartet played with perfection and were rightly met with considerable and lingering applause. After two enthusiastic curtain calls, the players returned for an encore performance of the Lento from Dvořák’s “American” String Quartet No. 12 in F-major. Composed the same year as his famous Ninth Symphony From the New World, the "American" Quartet possess all of the warm tonalities and longing, expansive melodies that would come to define the sound of American music with such composers as Virgil Thomson and Aaron Copland. The somber Lento is easily one of the more memorable movements, so its no wonder why the members of the Michelangelo Quartet would chose this as their encore. Its elegiac closing, which seemed to linger in the air long after the players stopped bowing, made for a haunting postlude to the program for those audience members who stayed for the initial applause. It was a lovely way to sign off the night.
~ Brad S Ross