MUSIC REVIEW: Avalon Quartet in Close Encounters with Music at the Mahaiwe

Submitted by Seth Rogovoy on February 21, 2010 - 4:36pm
Classical Music

 

 
 
Works by Prokofiev, Anton Arensky, and Beethoven
 
 
Review by Seth Rogovoy
 
 
 
(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass., February 21, 2010) - As so often in real life when all is said and done, Russia kicked Germany’s ass last night. But in this case, no one was hurt in the process, and the victory was an aesthetic and emotional one, not military or political.
 
 
 
In a program of three quartets tied together thematically through their incorporation, to various degree, of Russian folk music, the Avalon String Quartet drew connections among Russian composers Sergei Prokofiev and Anton Arensky and the old German master, Ludwig van Beethoven, as part of the Close Encounters With Music series at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center.
 
 
 
The quartet eschewed a chronological approach, which to these ears put the German at a disadvantage, as by the time the players got around to tackling Beethoven’s String Quartet, Op. 59, No. 2 (Razumovsky), the tenor of Tolstoyan pride as heard in the Prokofiev and Dostoevskian dread portrayed in the rarely played Arensky made the Beethoven sound downright Baroque.
 
 
 
This was, admittedly, a minority opinion, as the audience as well as some individuals seemed to have welcomed the post-intermission Beethoven as a relief from the somewhat astringent sounds of the Russians.
 
 
 
But to these ears, there was great beauty in depth in that astringency, especially as portrayed by the Avalon, and in particular in the Arensky, for which the quartet swapped violinist Marie Wang for cellists and Close Encounters artistic director Yehuda Hanani, as the piece calls for two cellos and one violin in addition to viola.
 
 
 
Prokofiev’s String Quartet No. 2 in F major, Op. 92 got the evening off on a shockingly raw footing, with first violinist Blaise Magniere stating the primitive folk melody while the others, including Wang, cellist Cheng-Hou Lee, and violist Tony DeVroye, pumped and wheezed like an accordion beast. Prokofiev made little attempt at transforming the Caucasian tune into a Western melody, not forcing upon it any Western modalities (such as Beethoven did earlier in the Razumovsky quartet), but rather, much as Bartok would do with Gypsy music, allowed the musicians to run with it on its own terms. The Avalon players seemed fine with not prettying it up but glorying in its discordances and rough-edged tonalities.
 
 
 
The second, Adagio section featured a mournful cello melody with downright avant-garde accompaniment, as the violins played repetitive ostinatos prefiguring late-twentieth-century minimalism, until a pizzicato passage introduced a jaunty, hillside romp played by Magniere, set against rocky, craggy hillside terrain by DeVroye.
 
 
 
As noted, Hanani joined the group for Arensky’s Quartet for Violin, Viola and Two Cellos, Op. 35. The piece opened with a mournful cello melody based upon an old Russian Orthodox chant (the composer dedicated the piece to his mentor, Tchaikovsky), and Magniere’s violin picked it up and brought it into the stratosphere before the cellos grabbed it back and returned it to its funereal roots. The second section, featuring seven variations on a children’s folk song by Tchaikovsky, was a guilty pleasure, the musicians tossing the number around like a jazz quartet.
 
 
 
It takes nothing away from the considerable talents of the young players in the Avalon, presumably in their early thirties, to note that the few times Hanani took the lead here, it was a case study in the difference between virtuoso technique and inspired artistry of the kind that can only come from a life lived wholly immersed in music and experience of the world, such as Hanani brings to his playing. The contrast between his nuanced, soulful playing and the, by comparison only, relatively bloodless interpretation by the Avalonians, was striking. How lucky we are to have a player of the caliber of Hanani call the Berkshires his home base, so that we can hear such world-class playing in the gorgeously intimate setting of the Mahaiwe on a regular and frequent basis.
 
 
 
As noted, after intermission the Avalon returned to play the Beethoven, which while providing some relief to those bothered by the dissonances of the first half (even though it’s only through dissonance that one can fully appreciate assonance), sounded like easy listening in comparison, closer to Vivaldi than Tchaikovsky. As I scribbled in my notebook, “Russians Roll Over Beethoven.”
 
 
 
Seth Rogovoy is Berkshire Living’s award-winning music critic.
 
 

 

 

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