Sierra Quartet Makes its O1C Debut

Last night at the Old First Presbyterian Church, the Sierra Quartet made its debut appearance in the Old First Concerts (O1C) series. This performance may not have taken place under the best of conditions. When this concert was announced about a month ago, the quartet consisted of the members when it was founded in 2018: violinists Elbert Tsai and Rochelle Nguyen, violist Christina Simpson, and cellist James Jaffe. Last night, however, only Tsai and Jaffe were performing. The second violinist was Corina Santos, and the violist was Jessica Chang.

There is nothing surprising about changes in the membership of a chamber ensemble. However, because this particular change seems to have been a recent one, it is likely that the new group is in the midst of a learning curve. One consequence may be that only one of the originally announced selections was included on last night’s program. That was Eleanor Alberga’s second string quartet, which may be familiar to followers of the Telegraph Quartet. Last night’s performance gave the impression that it was still on that learning curve. While the notes came across as properly in place, Alberga’s Jamaican origins were not as evident as they had been in the Telegraph performance.

As far as the rest of the program was concerned, the opening selection of a Joseph Haydn string quartet was replaced by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 589 (“Prussian”) quartet in B-flat major. Instead of Béla Bartók’s fourth string quartet, the second half of the program was devoted entirely to the first of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 59 (“Razumovsky”) quartets, the one in the key of F major. That final selection was the most convincing, perhaps because all four of the musicians had past experience with this music, even if they had not yet joined forces to perform it. The opening Mozart selection, on the other hand, never made a convincing case for itself, perhaps because the new membership had not yet settled on what that case should be.