From Eerie Shards to Vivid Emotion
Pacifica Quartet Presents Shulamit Ran Premiere and Classics
November 9, 2014
By: Zachary Woolfe
Encores
in
opera
houses are different
than they are in concert
halls, where artists
usually
respond
to
ovations by showing off
something new.
In
opera, though, excited
audiences will demand
a “bis” — a repeat of an
aria
that’s
gone
particularly well.
After warm applause at the end of the excellent Pacifica Quartet’s concert on
Friday evening at Alice Tully Hall, its members sat down for a surprising
encore: the second movement, “Menace,” of Shulamit Ran’s “Glitter, Doom,
Shards, Memory” (2012-13), which the group had played in its entirety before
intermission. It was a rare string quartet bis.
The Pacifica clearly believes strongly in “Glitter, Doom, Shards, Memory,”
whose world premiere it gave in May in Toronto; presented under the
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s auspices, this was the work’s New
York premiere. In four movements, it is inspired by the short life and eerie
art of the painter Felix Nussbaum (1904-44), who died at Auschwitz.
Ms. Ran’s craftsmanship is, as ever, expert. The first movement, “That Which
Happened,” begins with ethereal textures that thicken, with the addition of
pizzicato plucking and meatier cello lines, as the harmonies grow troubled.
The instruments mimic sirens, and dissonances build before an uneasily
calm ending that sets the stage for the second movement, an anxiously
rhythmic danse macabre, even more fiercely lucid in its encore performance.
In the third movement, impassioned solos emerge from ominous quiet, and
high arpeggios in the violins (Simin Ganatra and Sibbi Bernhardsson) quiver
alongside the earthy cello (Brandon Vamos). Ms. Ran skillfully deploys these
extremes of color, volume and pitch, yet the overall somewhat chilly
impression is one of poise.
Similarly, the final movement, “Shards, Memory,” seems intended to convey a
mood of dislocation and disintegration. But it ends up being merely coherent
and polished, with an eloquent viola solo (Masumi Per Rostad). Like the rest
of the work, it inspires admiration more than emotion.
Authentic emotion emerged more freely from the rest of the program:
Haydn’s Quartet in B flat, “Sunrise,” performed with delicacy and clarity;
Puccini’s “Crisantemi,” effectively restrained; and, especially, Mendelssohn’s
final quartet, in F minor, composed just after his sister’s death.
The Pacifica was alert to the fevered work’s restless wanderings and brief
oases of calm, sustaining feeling in the Adagio not by overstatement but
through unanimity of phrasing. The sound in the second movement was
hauntingly muted, like a dirge heard through the fog, and the ferocious finale
almost uncomfortably vivid.