Noe Music Presents a Disappointing Debut

Late yesterday afternoon at the Noe Valley Ministry, the 31st season of Noe Music presented its November offering. The performance was the San Francisco debut of the Dior String Quartet, whose members are first violinist Noa Sarid, second violinist Tobias Elser, Caleb Georges on viola, and Joanne Yesol Choi on cello. Their visit was held in partnership with the Emerging String Quartet Program at Stanford University, held in conjunction with the St. Lawrence String Quartet.

The second half of the program was devoted entirely to Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 117 (ninth) string quartet in E-flat major, composed in 1964. The program began with Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken III/72 quartet in C major, the first of the three Opus 74 quartets. This was followed by Kevin Lau’s third quartet, a two-movement composition completed in 2014.

Overall, the performance was an uneven affair, which saved the best for the last. Over the course of the afternoon, there was no question that the players could summon intense rhetoric from their instruments, both individually and as a group. However, that intensity did not serve its purpose until after the intermission.

The Shostakovich quartet consists of five movements played without interruption, and the overall duration tends to be around 25 minutes. The work’s Wikipedia page cites a remark by Shostakovich to Dmitri Tsyganov, first violinist of the Beethoven Quartet, which gave Opus 117 its first performance. He suggested that the quartet was inspired by “themes from childhood.” That said, if the music is retrospective, it is more likely to have been inspired by the many dark times of the composer’s past, rather than any happy days of youth. The Dior players clearly appreciate the intensity of those dark influences and delivered an edge-of-your-seat account of this late-in-life composition.

Unfortunately, that intensity was also invoked at the beginning of the program with their approach to Haydn. Mind you, Haydn was as skilled at evoking darkness as of expressing a sunny disposition. However, I am confident that he never used C major as a “key of darkness.” Sadly, the Dior players brought a heavy-handed approach to Hoboken III/72 that banished even the smallest hint of sunshine. Why did they take such a contrary approach to the composer’s rhetorical stance? Only the shadow knows!

Those heavy hands continued to command the quartet instruments in the performance of Lau’s quartet. The program note (which the players provided) suggested that a “singular tune” reflects a wide variety of active dispositions. Personally, I did not find it easy to suss out that tune; and, while the performance served up a healthy share of vigor, there was little sense of progression over the course of the two movements of the composition.

The good news is that the Shostakovich selection left the attentive listener with a solid source of satisfaction, even if it was the only one to emerge over the course of the entire program.

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