This past Thursday San Francisco Performances (SFP) celebrated the end of the year by uploading the video of the second of the two Beethoven Marathon recitals for viewing at the Front Row: 2020 Online Concert Series video archive on the SFP Web site. Once again the concert featured the SFP Ensemble-in-Residence Alexander String Quartet (ASQ), whose members are violinists Zakarias Grafilo and Frederick Lifsitz, violist Paul Yarbrough, and cellist Sandy Wilson. The first recital had presented quartets from the so-called “early” and “middle” periods, leaving the “late” period for the second.
There are five quartets in this collection. One of the most interesting features is that only the first (Opus 127 in E-flat major) and the last (Opus 135 in F major) come close to following the usual four-movement convention. Opus 132 in A minor has five movements with a middle movement whose duration fills roughly half of the entire composition. (It is also written in the Lydian mode, rather than either major or minor.) Opus 130 in B-flat major has six movements. In this case length was taken by the final “Große Fuge” (grand fugue), which was so long that it was extracted as Beethoven’s Opus 133 and replaced by a shorter movement. Opus 131 in C-sharp minor has seven movements, the middle of which is the longest as en elaborate set of variations on a theme.
Among these alternatives ASQ chose to play Opus 131. As I have come to know the late quartets better, this one has begun to emerge as my favorite. On the serious side there is no end of structural sophistication, beginning with a fugue developed on what may be the shortest subject in the entire fugue literature. Similarly, the pauses between the movements are minimal. Indeed, the video tried to include tempo labels of the individual movements; but some of the transitions were so subtle that the video crew missed a few of those labels!
These are all features that are well known to any well-credentialed musicologist. Those who like to read the details in their program books probably are familiar with all the observations in the preceding paragraph. However, what often eludes those listeners (and, sadly, many of the performers) is the fact that, for the most part, this quartet affirms that, for all the pains and troubles that Beethoven had to endure in the final years of his life, he never lost his sense of humor. The jokes begin in the very first movement with an almost bottomless pot of techniques for twisting and turning that minimal fugue theme. Furthermore, over the course of the entire quartet, every instrument has at least one opportunity to intrude on the others with an obstreperous rhetorical outburst. Then, of course, there are the individual variations in the middle movement, many of which could have served the soundtrack of a Looney Tunes cartoon.
Indeed, the biggest disappointment in viewing ASQ’s performance of Opus 131 is that they were all wearing face masks. Mind you, there were several camera angles from which one could appreciate how they were establishing eye contact; and there were nods that suggested when those eyes were twinkling. However, if ever there were a piece of chamber music in which full facial expression could be part of the performance, Opus 131 would be it! That said, the video account of the performance still made listening to this quartet an engaging experience and a perfect way to wrap up the Beethoven Marathon.
As was the case in the first recital, ASQ was preceded by a duo performance by violinist Yuri Cho and violist David Samuel. The latter is scheduled to replace Yarbrough in ASQ later this season. However, his performance with Cho was videotaped at the Music Theatre for the School of Music on the campus of the University of Aukland in New Zealand. Having begun the first marathon recital with the first of the duets, in the key of C major, in Beethoven’s WoO 27, Cho and Samuel opening the second marathon program with the second of the duets, this time in the key of F major. Once again, this was a pleasantly engaging three-movement composition, which served as the perfect warm-up to prepare listeners for Opus 131.
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