Tuesday, March 01, 2005
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Acclaimed string quartet closes CCMS season
By
Kendra Leonard
The Brentano String Quartet is one of the hottest ensembles playing today. Formed in 1992, the group rose quickly to the top of the profession garnering awards, prizes, and fabulous reviews as it went. Now a seasoned ensemble with plenty of touring and recording experience, the Brentano—named for Antoine Brentano, thought to be Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved” — is coming to Cincinnati as part of the Cincinnati Chamber Music Society (CCMS) series. Their performance on April 19 will mark the finale of the CCMS’s season.
Comprised of Mark Steinberg, violin; Serena Canin, violin; Misha Amory, viola; and Nina Maria Lee, cello, the group is planning an eclectic program for their Cincinnati concert. Starting off the recital will be a series of Renaissance madrigals by notorious Italian nobleman and composer Carlo Gesualdo, arranged by Bruce Adolphe. Gesualdo, whose dissonant and non-tonal writing foreshadowed the atonality of the early twentieth-century. He may be better known as the murderer of his unfaithful wife, her lover—the two of whom he caught together in flagrante delicto — and her children (because he could not be sure of their parentage) than as a composer. Because of his position as a member of the aristocracy, and because of the belief among many that adultery was suitably punishable by death, Gesualdo was never charged for his crimes, although they were well-known throughout the region. Instead, he fled his home city of Naples and lived in a self-imposed exile, where he devoted much of his time to composition. A masterful musician, Gesualdo created works for small vocal ensembles in which he set both sacred and secular texts, paying careful attention to the ways in which he set the words so as to emphasize the meaning and subtext of each one.
In addition to these settings, the Brentano String Quartet will also offer up Haydn’s Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 64, No. 3, and Beethoven’s Quartet in A minor, Op. 132. Haydn’s work is one of the last created as a court composer, before he struck out on his own with a concert series in London. In Op. 64, no. 3, Haydn experiments with rhythm and form, creating four movements, each with its own rhythmical character. The opening allegro offers up sparking writing contrasted with an intentionally square and stodgy primary tune; the following adagio plays with the intertwining of voice and line with a journey to a dark and melancholic minor key. In the minuet, rhythm is once again all-important as Haydn obscures the downbeat by using syncopation and unexpected rests to confuse the audience’s ears. The finale is a humorous end to the work, filled with sudden stops, starts, and circling figures that find their way and modulate through a number of keys.
Finally, the concert concludes with Beethoven’s Quartet in A minor, Op. 132. A dark and questioning work, this late quartet includes writing evocative of folk-song, bagpipe music, choral writing, modal materials and, ultimately, a long struggle that ends with a resolution in the major key. Composed in four movements, Op. 132 is a classic example of the quest for spiritual comfort expressed musically through glorious work.
Kendra Leonard is an arts historian based in the Cincinnati area.
