The Pacifica Quartet has mastered playing as a unit.
Last night I saw the Pacifica Quartet perform at NYU’s Frederick Loewe Theater. As a quartet on the younger side of the classical music business they showed why they are Musical America’s ensemble of the year and Grammy winners for best chamber music performance. Their playing was lucid and vibrant and the quartet’s ability to play as a unit is incredible. The communication between the bottom three voices was particularly remarkable. The program included Mendelssohn String Quartet in Eb Major, Beethoven Op. 74 (Harp) and finally Shostakovitch 8th String Quartet.
This Mendelssohn String Quartet was never assigned an opus number, as the first violinist Simin Ganatra kindly described. It was written when Mendelssohn was very young and never published during his life time. Ms. Ganatra then went on to mention the great lengths that the quartet had gone through to find a copy for them to play (it isn’t in print), taking them to the University of Chicago Library. The performance of the Mendelssohn was the most accomplished quartet playing of the evening. The music suits the playing of the quartet very well and the humor of the work was brought out to its fullest extent.
The Beethoven was also play very well, but for some reason the dynamism that the quartet had in the Mendelssohn was lost. This could be due to the length of the second movement of The Harp, draining the attentiveness of this listener. The first movement is always appreciated, and the tempo choice after the introduction kept a well worn piece fresh. I am afraid to say that after that, the same energy didn’t return until the last movement.
The Shostakovitch is always an incredible listen, and I would like to give my applause to Sibbi Bernhardssohn for giving a great explanation to the audience on what the work is about, it’s not easy to give a pre-performance discussion that makes sense and is just the right length (I imagine he would rather I laud his music making though). The first and last movement were the most polished of the work, and the style of these movements certainly lend themselves well to a quartet that has become so much of a single organism. That being said, the biggest problem with the middle three movements was the tempo. And by tempo I do not mean just their tempo choices, but the integrity of that tempo choice.
In the rough, insufferably fast second movement, their tempo would slow down until Ms. Ganatra would pick the tempo back up to its original pulse at one of her entrances. This is not a matter of artistic choice, which is concerning. Having played this quartet before it’s an understandable flaw to occur, but an audience’s ear is not as forgiving, especially if they’ve been spoiled with good recordings. Their articulation, dynamics, or any other facet you can think of were all marvelous, but the slowing down and sudden jump up in tempo was shocking, and not in a good way.
The third movement’s character, a biting macabre sound, was nailed. But again tempo was an issue, but this time I have to fault the quartet’s choices. At the ends of every phrase and also at the beginning of them they would slow down or speed up by huge margins, which is fine in select points. The problem with doing this every damn time is that it destroys any sense of pulse in a waltz, one of the most recognizable meters for a listener. Not only does this wild swing in tempo break down the feeling of one, but when Shostakovitch changes the meter, the effect is less pronounced as their isn’t any rhythmic integrity to jumble up in the first place.
Finally, in the fourth movement, and this is a personal preference, the tempo was a bit too fast. I prefer to allow time for the cello to expand out the one filament of hope that Shostakovitch has injected into the work. Taking the tempo a bit too fast caused a wonderful moment to rush by. The quartet encored with Astor Piazzolla’s Tango for Four which was universally loved. A recording of the work is below (unfortunately not the Pacifica).