Pacifica Quartet to Release Korngold Collection

Cover of the album being discussed, showing Pacifica Quartet members Brandon Vamos, Simin Ganatra, Mark Holloway, and Austin Hartman (from its Instagram Web page)

Tomorrow will see the release of the latest album of performances by the Pacifica Quartet, whose members are violinists Simin Ganatra and Austin Hartman, Mark Holloway on viola, and cellist Brandon Vamos. San Francisco readers may recall that, in December of last year, they partnered with clarinetist Anthony McGill for a thoroughly engaging account of Johannes Brahms’ Opus 115 quintet in B minor. The title of their new album is The Korngold Collection, which is definitely a significant departure from Brahms.

The album is a two-CD set, which accounts for Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s three string quartets: Opus 16 in A major, Opus 26 in E-flat major, and Opus 34 in D major. Each of these is basically a “standard string quartet.” However, because the first CD could accommodate only eleven movements, a second CD was required for the Finale movement of Opus 34! Fortunately, there were additional Korngold selections on that second CD. The first of these was the Opus 15 piano quintet in E major, with pianist Orion Weiss joining Pacifica. This was followed by the Opus 10 sextet in D major, whose other performers were Milena Pájaro-van de Stadt on viola and cellist Eric Kim.

According to my archives, my interest in Korngold’s quartets dates back to March of 2010 when the Bridge Players coupled the “third quartets” of both Korngold and Victor Ullmann. Since that time I have had better luck with Korngold than with Ullmann! There is an old joke that Korngold’s father, the Austrian music critic Julius Korngold, would accuse his son of “bathing” in his music, rather than composing it. Nevertheless, contemporary ears are likely to be more sympathetic, accepting the son’s capacity for engaging rhetoric and the sort of diversity that has the attentive listener wondering what will happen next.

More recently, in April of 2023, I had encountered all three of the quartets on a single Naxos CD performed by the Tippett Quartet, whose members are violinists John Mills and Jeremy Isaac, violist Lydia Lowndes-Northcott, and cellist Bozidar Vukotic. I feel more than a little sheepish at having discovered that I had previously written about these quartets! Nevertheless, I relish the opportunity that awaits me to “compare and contrast” how ensembles as different as Pacifica and Tippett have approached the same repertoire!