CMSF: Leonkoro String Quartet Debuts in Herbst

Leonkoro Quartet members Jonathan Schwarz, Amelie Wallner, Mayu Konoe, and Lukas Schwarz (from their Web site)

Yesterday afternoon in Herbst Theatre, Chamber Music San Francisco presented the Bay Area debut of the Leonkoro Quartet. The group was founded in Berlin in 2019. The “outer voices” are performed by two brothers, Jonathan Schwarz on first violin and cellist Lukas. The second violinist is Amelie Wallner with Mayu Konoe on viola. They are on a tour of North America, which took them to the West Coast yesterday. Only the cellist was seated for the recital, while the other musicians performed standing.

The quartet prepared a “three centuries” program with the twentieth century at the “core.” This was Alban Berg’s six-movement “Lyric Suite,” which explored the twelve-tone technique developed by his teacher, Arnold Schoenberg. The music was dedicated to Alexander von Zemlinsky, probably with the latter’s “Lyric Symphony” in mind. This “core” was “framed” by the eighteenth century (Joseph Haydn) at the beginning and the nineteenth (Felix Mendelssohn) at the end.

George Perle claimed that the “Lyric Suite” had a “secret dedication” for a passionate (and probably erotic) “secret programme.” Whether or not this is the case, Berg was a stickler for elaborate structural details. The suite is in six movements. The odd-numbered movements keep getting faster, and the even-numbered ones keep getting slower. As a result, the fresh “gioviale” spirit of the opening ultimately descends into a despondent “desolato.” However, the alternation of these dispositions makes the overall listening experience a pretty wild ride. Yesterday afternoon’s performance could not have delivered a more solid account of that wild ride, making it the high point of the entire program.

Nevertheless, the Leonkoro approaches to both Haydn and Mendelssohn were solid and consistently satisfying. The former was the fifth in his Opus 50 collection (Hoboken III/48), composed in the key of F major and given the title “The Dream,” which refers to the serenity of the second movement. The program then concluded with the second of the three Opus 44 Mendelssohn quartets. The E minor rhetoric of this quartet complemented the major key at the beginning of the program. The composer seemed to be particularly attentive to the viola in this particular quartet, and Konoe could not have done better justice to that attention.

The encore selection was Giacomo Puccini’s “Crisantemi” (chrysanthemums). This is a relatively early work, which is basically a lament in the key of C-sharp minor. He composed it relatively early in his career. Nevertheless, I find that its capacity for melancholy rhetoric delivers a profound impact that rises above the many overwrought qualities found in the composer’s tragic operas. The Leonkoro players knew exactly how to capture that rhetoric, making for a thoroughly engaging conclusion to their first visit to San Francisco.