Two Czech Piano Quartets from Ives Collective

Hrabba Atladottir, Keisuke Nakagoshi, Susan Freier, and Stephen Harrison performing yesterday afternoon at Old First Church (screen shot from the YouTube video of the event)

The Ives Collective, formed in 2015 by Co-Artistic Directors Susan Freier (violin and viola) and Stephen Harrison (cello), has been making frequent visits to Old First Concerts over the years, exploring different facets of repertoire by engaging different instrumentalists. Yesterday afternoon’s performance was structured with two piano quartets as “bookends,” both by Czech composers. The instrumentalists joining them for this occasion were violinist Hrabba Atladottir and Keisuke Nakagoshi on piano.

The program began with Bohuslav Martinů’s only piano quartet. This was one of the first pieces he composed after his emigration to the United States in 1941. Some readers may have noticed a certain bias towards Martinů in my articles. I first became aware of him in a summer music camp I attended after graduating high school, and I tend to jump at any opportunity to listen to his music. As a result, I found this opening selection particularly satisfying; and one may even appreciate the composer’s sigh of relief at having escaped European hostilities.

The other “bookend” was by the more familiar Antonín Dvořák, his Opus 87, which was the second of the two piano quartets he composed. Since I am a sucker for Dvořák’s chamber music, I welcome any opportunity for another serving. The Ives performers definitely gave the music the attention it deserved, bringing the overall “Czech venture” to a thoroughly engaging conclusion.

Between these two selections, Harrison and Nakagoshi performed Gabriel Fauré’s Opus 117 (second) cello sonata in G minor. This amounted to an acknowledgement that this year was the centennial of Fauré’s death. As one can tell from the opus number, this was one of Fauré’s final compositions. However, I would suggest that any sense of “finality” lies only in the mind of the moribund listener. Indeed, the final movement makes it clear that there was still no shortage of high spirits in Fauré’s rhetoric.

Once again, the Ives Collective delivered a performance that was as imaginative as it was engaging.