PIVOT Festival Continues with Catalyst Quartet

Last night in Herbst Theatre, the Catalyst Quartet of violinists Karla Donehew Perez and Abi Fayette (alternating in leading from first chair), violist Paul Laraia, and cellist Karlos Rodriguez offered the second of their three PIVOT Festival concerts, presented by San Francisco Performances. Like the first program, this one again began with a quartet by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, the third in his set of six quartetto concertans. The major works on the program were composed in the late nineteenth century: a string quartet in B minor by Teresa Carreño and Ethel Smyth’s Opus 1, a quintet in E major. The second cello part for that quintet was performed by guest artist Marcy Rosen. The remaining offering was a movement for string trio by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, which was his last composition, serving to complement Smyth’s earliest published work.

It is likely that all four of these selections amounted to “first contact” listening experiences for much of the audience. (In my own case only the Saint-Georges quartet was familiar.) The Smyth quintet was probably the major challenge, the only work on the second half of the program lasting for about half an hour. Personally, I was struck by the symmetry of her five-movement structure, a structure that would emerge a few decades later in the work of Gustav Maher. The outer Allegro movements are coupled to slow movements with a Scherzo in the very center. From a strictly listening point of view, however, what mattered most was an overall sense of flow across the entire composition. The five players consistently moderated the progress of that flow (although, during the post-performance discussion, they were not shy in disclosing the difficulty of execution).

Carreño’s quartet followed the more familiar four-movement structure and lasted about ten minutes shorter than Smyth’s quintet. This was her only piece of chamber music; and, to this day, she is best known for her rather large catalog of solo piano music. What struck me was that both of these compositions clearly had much to offer and deserved more than a single listening experience. I realized that, during last season, my capacity for listening to Catalyst had been informed by previous encounters with their UNCOVERED albums, while there was little to prepare me for both Carreño and Smyth.

What particularly interested me about Perkinson was his tenure with the Max Roach Jazz Quartet. Both Perkinson and Roach could take their own efforts at composition beyond the jazz repertoire. (I remember seeing a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for which Roach composed the music … which made me forget all about Felix Mendelssohn!) Perkinson’s single-movement work clearly provided much to engage the listener, but I came away wishing that I could take the time to listen to it a few more times.

Indeed, I would be only too happy to encounter another UNCOVERED album that would allow me to become better acquainted with not only Perkinson’s movement but also the multi-movement compositions by Carreño and Smyth.