Apollon Musagète Quartet members Paweł Zalejski, Bartosz Zachłod, Piotr Skweres, and Piotr Szumieł (from the ensemble’s Gallery Web page)
Yesterday afternoon in Herbst Theatre, Chamber Music San Francisco (CMSF) began its 2020 season with a recital by the Apollon Musagète Quartet. The members of this ensemble are all Polish: violinists Paweł Zalejski and Bartosz Zachłod, violist Piotr Szumieł, and cellist Piotr Skweres. These four musicians were inspired by the Alban Berg Quartet at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, and they studied as a group with Johannes Meissl at the European Chamber Music Academy.
The program they prepared was a straightforward one. Given the context of this year, a Beethoven selection was inevitable. They opted for an “Early Period” quartet from Opus 18, the third of those quartets in the key of D major. This was preceded by another D major quartet by Beethoven’s teacher. Joseph Haydn began the program with his Hoboken III/63 quartet, the fifth quartet in his Opus 64 collection, often known as the “Lark” quartet. The second half of the program was devoted to Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 105 in A-flat major.
The quartet’s account of all three of these pieces was consistently satisfying. I have noticed that, in the Opus 18 set, the D major quartet tends to get overlooked, perhaps because it is not “dramatic” enough to confirm the stereotypical preconceptions of Beethoven. Yet there is much to appreciate in the elegant polish that Beethoven brought to this particular score, and there is more than enough to engage the attentive listener in the polyphonic interweaving of the four instrumental parts. In the context of yesterday’s article, this account was yet another engaging departure from that ghastly “scowling Beethoven” stereotype, leaving me curious as to how this group would approach the quartets that Beethoven wrote later in his life.
As might be anticipated, the Haydn selection was equally good-natured. Opus 64 was the third published collection of quartets dedicated to Johann Tost, who led the second violin section at Eszterháza. The selection coupled well with the Beethoven that followed, an equally elegant model of polyphonic craft basking in D major sonorities that sound particularly sunny when played by the string instruments.
I have to say that I was particularly delighted with the second half of the program on personal grounds. I have grown more than a bit weary of string quartets that assume that the Opus 96 (“American”) quartet in F major is the only Dvořák selection that audiences want to hear. Unless I am mistaken, my only other encounter with Opus 105 in concert was due to the Cypress String Quartet, whose Dvořák scope was much broader (and far more appealing to my personal tastes). Fortunately, Apollon Musagète had no trouble making a case for the virtues of this composition and easily won over yesterday afternoon’s audience with their well-polished and informed account of Dvořák’s logic and rhetoric.
For their encore selection Apollon Musagète took the liberty of departing from more familiar names and compositions. They performed the third of five pieces that Erwin Schulhoff composed for string quartet, each of which amounted to a miniature account of parody. The third of these pieces is entitled (in English) “Czech folk music.” In its brief duration it begins with a ring of familiarity (particularly when played after Dvořák’s music) but does not waste any time in letting both thematic material and rhetoric go haywire. The listening experience thus migrates from mild chuckles to an overt belly-laugh at the conclusion. To some extent one might say the same of the ensemble’s decision to perform in matching outfits of lavender plaid (which, according to the program notes, were custom-made)!
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