From the Classical Past to the Recent Present

Last night in Herbst Theatre, the Isidore String Quartet made its San Francisco Performances debut with a program that framed a recent work by a jazz pianist with quartets by two of the “classical style” composers (in order of appearance): Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. The jazz pianist was Billy Childs, but his string quartet was a far cry from jazzy. His early compositions were influenced by Paul Hindemith, Maurice Ravel, and Igor Stravinsky. However, last night’s selection emerged from an entirely different influence.

The work was Childs’ third string quartet, given the title “Unrequited.” Childs described the composition as “conceived as a commentary on the story of Intimate Letters: String Quartet #2, by Leos [sic] Janáček.” This was an ambitious undertaking, given that the Wikipedia page for this quartet describes it as “inspired by his [the composer’s] long and spiritual friendship with Kamila Stösslová, a married woman 38 years his junior.” However, if Janáček’s music reflected on a passion that was never consummated, Childs’ quartet turns to his own variation on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief. He describes the “program” of his quartet as “from romantic, pure love, through paranoid, obsessive, neurotic possessiveness, arriving finally at despondent acceptance.” This struck me as an ambitious undertaking; but I found that, if I set the “technical details” aside, the journey through Childs’ quartet could be engaging on the merits of the music itself.

The ensemble chose to get the audience’s attention by beginning with Mozart’s K. 465 quartet in C major. This was given then nickname “Dissonance” due to the adventurously ambiguous harmonic progressions in the opening Adagio. However, once the Allegro portion of the first movement begins, the quartet unfolds the many engaging qualities that one finds in all of that composer’s quartets. This is music that may well have been familiar to most of the audience, but the Isidore players delivered a delightfully refreshing account.

The second half of the program was devoted entirely to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 127 quartet in E-flat major. Anticipation of quartets from the “late period” tend to furrow brows, but the overall rhetoric of this particular quartet could not be more refreshing. Indeed, this is one of those pieces in which the Scherzo movements really does have a sense of humor! As with their Mozart, the Isidore players found just the right rhetorical stances for each of the quartet’s four movements.

Isidore String Quartet performers Adrian Steele, Joshua McClendon, Devin Moore, and Phoenix Avalon (photograph by Jiyang Chen, courtesy of San Francisco Performances)

Those players are violinists Adrian Steele and Phoenix Avalon (exchanging first chair on either side of the intermission), Devin Moore on viola, and cellist Joshua McClendon. Their chemistry as an ensemble could not have been better. They clearly understood the principle of how the whole can be more than the sum of its parts! Furthermore, the program they prepared made it clear that adding new works to repertoire is as important as revisiting the classics!