The Breakers Mansion Great Hall hosted the Isidore String Quartet Wednesday evening. Violinists Adrian Steele and Phoenix Avalon, violist Devin Moore, and cellist Joshua McClendon teamed up as undergraduates in the Juilliard School in 2019, and named their quartet after the legendary violinist Isidore Cohen, who was a member of the Juilliard String Quartet for ten years before joining the Beaux Arts Trio. Since then, they have won numerous awards and appeared in major festivals across the globe, their guiding artistic vision that of “approaching the established as if it were brand new, and the new as if it were firmly established.”
In the sumptuous acoustics of the Gilded Age Great Hall the group played out this vision to the delight of concert goers. Quartets of Haydn and Mendelssohn bookended the String Quartet No. 2 of jazz pianist and composer Billy Childs.
Haydn penned some of his most interesting works before finding his “Classical Viennese” voice. These early examples show a unique inventiveness as Haydn experimented with many forms, styles, and sounds in attempt to find his authentic voice. The Op. 20 group of string quartets known as the “Sun” quartets, of which we heard the second, are a fine example of this, as they combined established late Baroque writing styles with new and innovative ideas boldly applied. Canon and counterpoint combine with chromatic lines and harmonies, while the cello and viola are given an equal share in the melodic material along with the violins. A hallmark of the “Sun” quartets is the finale movement – a fugue highlighting the equality and independence of the four voices. The fugue of this quartet is on “four subjects,” and while some of them are used as countersubjects, they are also inverted, a favorite technique of Bach. While canonic imitation persists throughout the whole of the movement, more homophonic textures combine with brilliant virtuosic passages thus breaking down the more formalized idea of fugue. The quartet’s approach to this quartet was invigorating and refreshing, even if a bit unconventional. Passages whisked by at extremely fast tempi, with wispy and hushed pianissimos creating flurries of sound that quickly dissipated into thin air as passages played off one another. Passages that reflected a more Baroque line against continuo were often played with a pure non-vibrato sound, evoking an older and more ancient sound, while other passages were delivered with a boldness and a freedom more characteristic of later periods. Whatever one’s pre-conceived notion of a style is, this performance was none-the-less riveting.
Billy Childs’s 2012 String Quartet No. 2 “Awakening” musics his spiritual journey through his wife’s pulmonary embolism, their ordeal in the hospital room, and subsequent healing. “Wake Up Call” describes the initial shock and horror of discovery of the serious illness, with frenetic, angry, and frustrated passages combining a 12-tone row against tremolos, pizzicato, slides, harmonics, sul ponticello, drones, non-vibrato, and other extended techniques. One recalls here the quartets of Bartók, who used such effects to craft new and innovative sounds in his oeuvre. “The White Room” continues this journey, as the instruments variously express solitary expressing heartache and anger, set against the ostinato patterns of the hospital machines devoid of human emotion, while a two-note pulse represents the beating of the human heart. The final movement, Song of Healing, features an eloquent viola solo and later an emotion-laden duet between violin and cello against quiet cluster chords, often complex as used in jazz harmonies, which finally melt into a major chord of trust and peace as a silence enveloped the entire room with not a sound to be heard. This was undoubtedly the emotional high point of concert,
Mendelssohn’s String Quartet no 5 in E-flat Major, Op. 44 No. 3 from 1838, a year after his marriage, radiates unbridled joy and the heroic, often associated with the key of E-flat Major. Here again, the quartet displayed an emotional freedom, dynamic expression, and bold virtuosity, tossing off passages with rapidity and precision, often wispy and fleeting, creating a sense of beauty coupled with dynamic heraldry. They tugged at our heartstrings.
For a complete schedule of the summer festival and all its creative programming and outreach efforts, click HERE.