David Lang’s daisy (2024) was co-commissioned by La Biennale di Venezia, Kings Place (UK), String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam, Park Avenue Armory (New York), Isabella Stewart Gardnew Museum (Boston), and Newport Classical with additional support from the Artists Development Fund of the Rhode Island Foundation. The two-time Grammy Award winning Attacca Quartet gave the world premiere in Venice on October 1, 2024, alongside George Crumb’s Black Angels, which had a profound influence on Lang. Subsequent performances followed in Amsterdam, London, Bogota, Newport, and an upcoming one in New York in December. Newport Classical’s performance in the Breakers Mansion Saturday evening did not offer the Crumb but instead followed the Lang US premiere with Bartók’s iconic String Quartet No. 4 BB 95, Sz. 91 (which was last heard at the Newport Festival in 2023 in the Aizuri Quartet’s concert [reviewed HERE]. The second half consisted of Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 6 in F Minor Op. 80.
Violinist Amy Schroeder and cellist Andrew Yee founded the Attacca Quartet with two of their Juilliard School cohorts in 2023. While the other members have changed several times, Schroeder and Lee have remained, even while pursuing their individual solo careers and other collaborations. Violist Nathan Schram joined the group in 2025, followed by violinist and composer, Domenic Salerni in 2020, cementing the group’s current make-up.
David Lang’s composition was commissioned to be premiered along with the Crumb, written “in a time of war,” specifically the Viet Nam war in 1970. President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) ran with a campaign ad called “Daisy” which featured a young girl
…plucking the petals off a flower, who is then interrupted by the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb…my quartet daisy proposes two different futures for the innocent. The opening movement – “first daisy” – begins in a gentle openness that is soon forgotten, and taken for granted, and which then becomes relentlessly overwhelmed. The concluding movement – “second daisy” – imagines what might happen if that gentle and open spirit could be believed, and valued, and supported, and preserved.” (from the program notes by David Lang).
It opens with a single melodic line but splits it into two and three note minimalist groupings which echo and overlap one another. A simple but beautiful construct, in that it conveys the paradoxical fracturing of a line into pieces, while preserving the line through the overlapping of them one upon the other, creating brief, ephemeral dissonances that appear like a firefly, a fleeting moment which just as quickly disappears, as if it were not there at all. The constant fracturing and repositioning gently unfolds into a two and eventually a three-part counterpoint, joined by a gently plucking bass that offers some sense of tonality and centering. Poignant and expressive, the music gradually gains motion and intensity, the line being transgressed upon by more punctuated chord and rhythms. A full and sonorous finish to “first daisy” suddenly shifts back to the opening, innocent and sad, beautifully lyric. This “second daisy” unfolds much as the first movement in its line and technique, but as “second daisy” matures, she remains calm, gently moving, her sound one of optimism and confidence. The music opens outward into drones of peace and contemplation, and then the whole texture moves inward, converging into a single unison note at the softest tone imaginable, which fades into…
Attacca played with incredible grace and sensitivity to the music, painting both daisy visions with poignancy and lyricism, giving even the most fleeting dissonance a sense of direction, connection, and resolution, eventually fading into the “nothingness” that suggests a Buddhist state of perfection, (though this piece was not described as intentionally Buddhist). The quartet brought David Lang’s “story line” concept and his music into a sonic reality that was totally breathtaking.
That observation held for the rest of the concert. After offering a brief “story line” or concept description of Bartók’s fourth string quartet, the foursome began in a rather subdued and relaxed manner, avoiding the highly aggressive attacks, violent noise, and breakneck speeds frequently associated with Bartók in general and this work in particular. This more relaxed approach showed a maturity of interpretation, and allowed for greater clarity of line, and significantly more effective contrasts between the loud and the soft, with the very softest, triple-piano tones and slides evocatively tone painting Bartók’s rural Hungarian world. The “night music” of the slow movement sounded entirely magical, subdued and expressive, and the beauty of the lines contained within continued in the surrounding faster movements. The Hungarian flavor of the fourth movement, with its sonorous final notes, left one with a deeper appreciation of Bartók and the many modes of expression he employed in this groundbreaking staple of the quartet literature.
Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 6 in F Minor Op. 80 closed out the evening, with Attacca delivering a searing and dramatic rendition of this emotional outpouring of grief from the composer, coming just a few months after the death of his beloved sister Fanny, and a few months before his own death in 1847. The F Minor String Quartet “remains his most intensely emotional work — a raw, heartbreaking tribute to Fanny and a powerful farewell from one of the Romantic era’s most beloved voices.” (~from the Program Notes, Annie Jacobs-Perkins). The highly virtuosic first violin part quartet at times resembles a concerto, coming just four years after the master’s E Minor violin concerto, another brilliant technical tour-de-force. Schroeder rendered it with plenty of fire, her companions giving equal measure in a tight-knit bond. Soaring lines, marked clarity, sharp dynamic contrasts, and a deep and mature empathy for the music produced a spellbinding and unforgettable account. Fortunately, for Rhode Islanders and southern Connecticut music lovers, the Attacca Quartet will be appearing at the Watch Hill Chapel series in August.
Newport Classical Summer Festival closes this week with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and violinist Stefan Jackiw playing the above-mentioned Mendelssohn Concerto, alongside Arensky’s Variations on a Theme by Tchaikovsky, and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings. Information on the final concert may be found HERE, while the full festival brochure is HERE.