Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Dover Quartet’s Brahms-and-Beyond Program

Last night in Herbst Theatre the Dover Quartet launched the first of the six programs to be performed in the Shenson Chamber Series presented by San Francisco Performances (SFP). This was the third visit to SFP made by violinists Joel Link and Bryan Lee, violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, and cellist Camden Shaw. The group had made its SFP debut on October 30, 2016. It then launched the 2018–2019 season, also by presenting the first concert in the Shenson Chamber Series. Last night’s program also featured bass-baritone Davóne Tines as guest artist. The program was framed by string quartets at beginning and end, with Tines contributing to two sections in the middle of the program.

One can probably make a case for the program following a “trajectory of influences;” but the path was not a straight one. The oldest work on the program was the conclusion, the second, in the key of A minor, of the two string quartets that Johannes Brahms published as his Opus 51. Brahms took his time in composing and publishing the Opus 51 quartets. He began work in 1865 but did not complete the quartets until 1873. He had twenty previous efforts, of which eighteen were destroyed and the other two never published in his lifetime. 1865 was also the year of his Opus 40 horn trio in E-flat major, which was preceded by the F minor piano quintet (Opus 34) and the first two piano quartets, Opus 25 in G minor and Opus 26 in A major. Brahms was clearly building a solid portfolio in the chamber music genre.

Of the two Opus 51 quartets, the A minor gives the sense of having been composed by a surer hand, which probably explains why it is performed more often than its predecessor in C minor. The textures tend to be thick; but, when given an effective performance, the attentive listener can appreciate the elaborately embellished intertwining of the instrumental voices. The Dover players could not have been more effective in doing justice to not only those technical details but also the overall tone of expressiveness emerging from those details.

While leaving Herbst I found myself reflecting on how seldom I had encountered any of the Brahms quartets prior to my move to the San Francisco Bay Area. Most of those encounters have taken place in Herbst under SFP auspices. I just hope that New York City has been catching up on all those efforts I have encountered to give those quartets their proper due!

The A minor quartet concluded a program which began in A major with Alexander Zemlinsky’s Opus 4 (first) quartet. The rhetorical intensity of this music contrasted sharply with the Brahms quartet, which seems to have scrupulously avoided overstatement. Nevertheless, there is no shortage of moments when the attentive listener can identify the composer’s awareness of the influences of both Brahms and Antonín Dvořák. Zemlinsky completed this quartet in 1895. Brahms was still alive and seems to have appreciated the young composer’s efforts. (Zemlinsky was 24 at the time.) Indeed, through Brahms’ influence, Zemlinsky’s quartet was was published by N. Simrock, which was also Brahms’ publisher.

Zemlinsky would only begin to find his own unique voice during the twentieth century with influences from both Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg. In the opera world he is probably best known for two one-acts, both based on works by Oscar Wilde. San Francisco Opera had planned to present one of them, “Der Zwerg” (the dwarf), in the summer of 2020; but that event had to be cancelled due to COVID-19. Over the course of his life, Zemlinsky composed four quartets, each with the capacity to reward the attentive listener. Given the compelling expressiveness that Dover brought to the Opus 4 quartet, I found myself wondering if they were planning to undertake the entire cycle. Having enjoyed that cycle through recordings, I would be more that delighted to experience it through a series of concerts.

On this program, however, the twentieth century was represented by Samuel Barber. Tines’ first performance as guest artist was an account of that composer’s Opus 3 “Dover Beach,” a setting of the poem of the same name by Matthew Arnold. Barber composed his setting for medium voice and string quartet in 1931, when he was still only twenty. The poem itself is a tough nut to crack, but it is clear that Barber had a strong appreciation of English literature. There is a clear sense that he established a firm command of reading Arnold’s text before beginning to set it to music. The result is an impressively clear-eyed view of text passages that seem puzzling, if not hopelessly opaque, when first encountered.

The clarity of Barber’s score was perfectly matched by Tines’ expressive delivery and its intertwining with the quartet textures. Mind you, there are times that the music threatens to go overboard. However, Tines kept a sure hand on his own expressiveness, providing at least the sense of a convincing account while negotiating both syntax and semantics that run the risk of being little more than cryptic. Barber himself was a baritone. and there is a 1935 recording of him singing with the Curtis String Quartet, which was released on the Victor label. It was through that recording that I first became aware of this music; and, in that context, I could not have been more satisfied with the immediacy of Tines’ grasp of the many tricky details in Arnold’s text.

Tines was equally convincing in his account of By and By, four traditional gospel songs given decidedly unique arrangements for voice and string quartet by Caroline Shaw. Tines’ vocal delivery provided just the right blend of gospel tradition with art song technique. Shaw’s writing for the quartet, on the other hand, tended to walk the line between playful and provocative. She seemed to be interested in how many different things could be done with the instruments of the string family without drawing the bow across the strings. Some of the results, such as the sound of rhythmic knocking, seemed to align with the text that Tines was singing. Others seemed to be superfluous, if not on the brink of fatuous. One almost came away with the impression that Tines was a passionately devout preacher ministering to a restless audience.

To be fair, most of my first-encounter experiences with Shaw’s music have left me perplexed. Sometimes things begin to get clearer with further listening. Sometimes they get more opaque. Where By and By is concerned, the jury is still out on just what is taking place between a passionate vocalist and obstreperous instrumentalists.

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