QUARTET ALSO SHINES ON WORK BY MOZART, BEETHOVEN
The Miró Quartet has a way of going inside music, exposing its
architecture, so that a listener can "see" the nuts and bolts and the
whole sweep of it. If that sounds like a clinical approach, it's not.
The group's playing is not only super-clear, but also vital, simmering
with emotion.
The quartet's Saturday concert at Le Petit Trianon, where it opened the
San Jose Chamber Music Society's 22nd season, was remarkable. Mozart's "Hoffmeister"
Quartet started it: a place of deep solace. Beethoven's first "Razumovsky"
Quartet ended it: a teeming world of melody and countermelody, emotion and
counter-emotion.
In between, there was a brand-new piece by New York-based composer
Kevin Puts, commissioned by Chamber Music Monterey Bay for the Miró.
Titled "Credo," it evokes Puts' belief in the essential goodness of
America - or Americans, maybe. It moves from long-lined tranquillity to a
bracing grandeur and fades into the sort of Quaker silence that's
generally been forgotten in a multimedia, war-torn world.
It's a touching and beautiful piece and was beautifully played by the
Miró, which had given "Credo" its world premiere only the night before in
Carmel.
Puts was on hand Saturday, adding a lot to the event. In a pre-concert
conversation with San Jose State University musicologist William R.
Meredith, he talked about the role of music: Should it offer peace and
sanctuary to a listener, ŕ la Mozart, or surprise and challenge a listener
without "completely throwing [him or her] off the train," ŕ la Beethoven?
While identifying with Beethoven, Puts said, he loves Mozart best, and
"Credo" made that clear. It dips into a 20th- century vocabulary - glassy
textures, with occasional clashing elements - but feels like a sanctuary,
ruled by balance and beauty, two key elements in Mozart. It also bears a
relationship to the pastoral music of Aaron Copland but, unlike many
recent pieces in that genre, avoids sugary Americana sentiment.
Its narrative gets spun through three vignettes. One evokes Puts' visit
with his fiancee, a violinist, to a small-town violin shop in upstate New
York; another, his jogging along Pittsburgh's Monongahela River,
overshadowed by an awesome maze of bridges and highways; a third, his
looking out the window of his Manhattan apartment and seeing, in an
apartment across the street, a mother teaching her child to dance.
The Miró threaded through this musical story with its usual attention
to technical detail and emotional nuance. Some highlights: a soft
backdrop-chorale for second violin, cello and viola while the first violin
(Daniel Ching) tries out bits of Bach and Sibelius in the violin shop; the
bracing bridge-like chords of the Monongahela infrastructure movement,
above the river's rushing (and fast-fiddled) waters; and the tender sense
of time suspended in the dance movement, with a glowing song for cello
(Joshua Gindele) over soft drones.
Next there's a brief return to the Monongahela and then the final
movement, which Puts described as a "meditation on the theme of hope." It
resembles a slow-turning hymn, with a handful of repeating, almost
pop-inflected chords, drifting away.
Two last thoughts: During the Mozart, the Miró would find a place to
pause, letting the music hang in the air like candy floss; during
Beethoven's Adagio, it milked the slow tempos into a new kind of high
drama.
Richard Scheinin
San Jose Mercury News
pub. October 15, 2007
