NY:St. Lawrence String Quartet;One Fresh Score in Place of Another

St. Lawrence String Quartet が，New York で新作を引っさげて演奏会を開く予定だったのですが，新作が間に合わなかったために，John Adams’s String Quartet (2008)を代わりに演奏したそうです．

St. Lawrence String Quartet は，結局，The St. Lawrence — Geoff Nuttall and Scott St. John, violinists; Lesley Robertson, violist; and Christopher Costanza, cellist — surrounded the Adams with Haydn’s Quartet in D (Op. 20, No. 4) and Schubert’s Quartet in G (D. 887), both in highly polished, thoroughly unified performances. と，Haydn’s Quartet in D (Op. 20, No. 4), John Adams’s String Quartet (2008), Schubert’s Quartet in G (D. 887) の順で好演を展開したようです．

この評論では，弦楽四重奏の新曲は，初演されては消えてしまうという常識からすると，John Adams’s String Quartet は例外で，St. Lawrence が２００９年にJuilliard で初演して，同年暮れにAxiom, a student ensemble at the Juilliard School によって再演され，2年後の今回のSt. Lawrence の演奏がby far the bestだったそうですが，これによってAdams の曲が3度目の演奏で大きな注目を浴びることになりますが，評者は未だ分かりにくいところがあり，さらなる推敲が望まれると書いています．

 

Music Review

One Fresh Score in Place of Another

By ALLAN KOZINN

Published: March 9, 2011

The centerpiece of the St. Lawrence String Quartet’s program at Zankel Hall on Tuesday evening was to have been a new work by Osvaldo Golijov, whose music this ensemble has championed since its (and his) early days. But the piece was not ready, so the St. Lawrence players revived another recent acquisition,John Adams’s String Quartet (2008).

Joe Kohen for The New York Time                                                                                                                                                         The St. Lawrence String Quartet featuring, from left, Geoff Nuttall, Scott St. John, Christopher Costanza and Lesley Robertson, at Zankel Hall.

Here is an exception to the generally valid complaint that new scores vanish after their first performances. I heard the St. Lawrence play the premiere of this quartet at a Juilliard Focus! concert in early 2009, and that December I heard it again, played by Axiom, a student ensemble at the Juilliard School. Now, 15 months later, it is back, and so far it stands the test of time. Not surprisingly, given that the St. Lawrence musicians have had the work in their hands for more than two years, the Zankel account was by far the best.

Where the first two readings introduced the piece’s continuously shifting contours and revealed the breadth of Mr. Adams’s current style — unrestrained eclecticism, with only occasional reminders of his Minimalist roots — this time the ensemble added a visceral dimension that put the score’s ample drama in high relief. The transition from the shimmering, repetitive figures that open the piece to the angular counterpoint that follows sounded smoother, and the first movement’s journey had an inexorable quality — a combination of tension and drive — that suggested a temperamental kinship with the late Beethoven quartets.

There are still points in the quartet that remain puzzling. After so much electrifying interplay Mr. Adams provides a contrastingly relaxed section that seemed oddly diffuse. Perhaps further hearings will clarify the need for this anticlimactic retreat. In any case, it does not last long before it gives way to trilled sparring between the lines. In the second movement Mr. Adams uses a Morse-code-like opening passage as a way back to the heated, luminous writing that made most of the first movement so gripping.

The St. Lawrence — Geoff Nuttall and Scott St. John, violinists; Lesley Robertson, violist; and Christopher Costanza, cellist — surrounded the Adams with Haydn’s Quartet in D (Op. 20, No. 4) and Schubert’s Quartet in G (D. 887), both in highly polished, thoroughly unified performances.

There have been times, in past seasons, when energy and enthusiasm have come close to swamping fastidiousness in this group’s readings, and generally the results were exciting enough that the tradeoff was acceptable. Now the ensemble’s accuracy matches its vitality.

In the Haydn a fluid approach to tempos and dynamics yielded an organic, supple rendering that coalesced brilliantly in the speedy, hard-driven finale. And in the Schubert (for which Mr. St. John took over as first violinist), gravity, warmth and textural richness illuminated the composer’s luxurious meditation.