HIGH NOTES
BY HARRY SCHROEDER
In one of the few concerts remaining in the hospitable acoustics of the Armory auditorium, the Studios of Key West was host to a brilliant concert by the Blue Door String Quartet, the Symphony’s Quartet-In-Residence. The Quartet — Whitney LaGrange, first violin; Funda Cizmecioglu, second violin; Maria Gotoh, viola; and Arthur Cook, cello — played music by Bernard Hermann, Leos Janacek, and Bedrich Smetana. The choice of program was, as it has usually been, just right for this audience: Nearly all of it fairly advanced harmonically, but not so much as to bother any but the most conservative musical ear.
The excellence of Whitney LaGrange’s lead violin playing came through from the very first phrase in the concert. In exposed passages her sound was broad and perfectly controlled; in ensemble passages it blended nicely with the other strings. As always with her playing, there were no concessions or compromises. Not much in the program made extreme demands on her virtuosity, but what there was, she handled apparently effortlessly. This was true also of the group as a whole — my ear, such as it is, didn’t pick up any wrong notes all evening. That was especially remarkable in the difficult final movement of the Smetana.
Funda Cizmecioglu, on second violin, played what the music demanded, with a nice blend with the first violin and a good open sound on exposed passages. Maria Gotoh’s viola playing was attractively eclectic. Most of it was more or less as expected of an inner voice. In the Hermann, it had a bite to it, and in her playing in the first movement of the Smetana, in much of which the viola was the dominant voice, the instrument came into its own, with a sound broader and more generous than any violin could bring forth. Arthur Cook’s cello provided, once again, a solid foundation. At one point it was scored above the other, treble, instruments, a rare occurrence. Generally he was consistent over the whole range of the instrument, with extra strength in the low register. And his support was of extra value when the music called for a solid regular beat, as it did in the second movement of the Smetana.
Bernard Hermann was a film composer, but, unlike most of those who wrote for Hollywood, he made no concessions to directors or public taste: as he once remarked, “I have the final say, or I don’t do the music.” In the Blue Door’s selection, “Echoes,” that independence comes through. Nothing in his writing hints at Hollywood except a flair for the dramatic, perhaps learned from his experience scoring movies: the opening of the piece, two single solo notes from the first violin answered by two more from the second, was striking in its simplicity.
The Smetana was written in 1876, the Janacek in 1923 (the Hermann came as late as 1965, but retrospectively). Listening to this program, it was clear why during that half century composers were breaking out, or had broken out completely, from the diatonic scale and the circle of fifths, the framework for music since well before Bach: Four voices within those ancient harmonic limits could never have achieved the intensely rich sounds which all three pieces gave forth in this concert. It was not comforting music, certainly, but it never once failed to be very interesting.
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