Quatuor Arod Makes its San Francisco Debut

Last night in Herbst Theatre, Chamber Music San Francisco presented three of the members of the Quatuor Arod: violinist Jordan Victoria, violist Tanguy Parisot, and cellist Jérémy Garbarg. Apparently due to visa problems, second violinist Alexandre Vu was unable to join them on the American tour, which included their debut performance in San Francisco. Fortunately, American violinist Anthony Bracewell was equipped to replace Vu for the tour; and, to judge by last night’s performance, he had no trouble fitting in with the three quartet members.

The program was a lengthy one, probably due to the fact that the Arod players are inclined to take all repeats. Like many offerings this season, the program was framed by two of the First Viennese School composers. The opening selection was Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken III/35 quartet in F minor. This is the fifth of the six quartets in the Opus 20 collection and one of the three of those quartets to conclude with a fugue (in this particular case a fugue with two subjects). This minor key quartet was complemented by the second half of the program, which was devoted entirely to Franz Schubert’s D. 810 string quartet in D minor, whose second movement is a set of variations on the theme of the D. 531 song “Der Tod und das Mädchen” (Death and the maiden).

Due to all the repeats (as well as a reading of the text of the song), that was enough content to fill a two-hour evening; but Haydn and Schubert were separated by the first of Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 44 quartets, composed in the key of D major. To some extent this relieved the pressure of the two minor-key quartets on the other sides. Nevertheless, the duration did not seem to bother most of the audience, who responded to all of the selections with enthusiastic applause. As a result, the French ensemble decided to provide an encore of French music: the third movement from Claude Debussy’s only string quartet.

Matters of duration aside, that enthusiastic reception was well deserved. The players clearly established a convincing rhetorical framework in their performance of each of the three selections. The minor-key rhetoric of the Haydn and Schubert quartets cast a well-defined dark shadow, due in no small part to the collective approach to phrasing and dynamics. This led to edge-of-the-seat attention by any serious listener; and, in that context, one can appreciate inserting the Mendelssohn selection as a calming influence before the storm returned for the Schubert quartet.

As a result, if this evening turned out to be a lengthy one, no one in the audience seemed to have been fazed by how much time had elapsed; and I expect that many of us are already looking forward to a return visit.