Wednesday, May 3, 2006

Double tribute breaks new ground

By Herman Trotter

Anniversary tributes to composers always are well intended, but often more politically correct than enlightening.

In observing the 250th birth anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the 100th of Dmitri Shostakovich, the Alexander Quartet came up with a formula and a transcendent performance that really broke some new ground.

The group opened with an adagio movement from the 14-year-old Mozart’s Quartet No. 1, K. 80, full of light, but probing lyricism, then presented the first Buffalo performance of Mozart’s transcription of Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E flat from Book II of the Well-Tempered Clavier, somber but structurally transparent.

A performance of Mozart’s Quartet in C, K. 465, called the “Dissonant” Quartet, completed the Mozart tribute with a performance that balanced seriousness of intent with a lightness of texture, all of which imbued the music with a luminous clarity.
Shostakovich paid tribute to Bach with 24 preludes and fugues for piano, and the Shostakovich tribute opened with No. 15 in D flat minor, full of folk-like lilt and saw-toothed angularity.

Forgive the brevity, but I must confess that the performance of the concluding Shostakovich Quartet No. 3 was so extraordinary that it deserves special commentary.

The work, written during and after World War II, is full of the angst of war and communist oppression, all of which apply equally to our presently troubled world. The opening theme is deceptively whimsical, even flip. But in the following skewed waltz movement, a dissolute quality permeates the music with eerie, groping spiccato pianissimo figures, while the stabbing attacks of the following movement were executed with superb precision and the unexpected sudden cutoff at the end took many listeners’ breath away.

The following adagio was wonderfully biting and introspective, while the concluding movement recapitulated the work’s tensions and some of its early innocence before ending in sardonic, ghostly quietude that, again, had the entire audience holding its breath.

The Alexander musicians were so in control of the music’s emotional contours and lurches, and so spiritually attuned to Shostakovich’s message that they seemed not so much to be playing the music as breathing it.

The Russian writer Ilya Ehrenberg once said: “Music has the great advantage of being able to tell everything without mentioning anything.” This was one of those performances.