AFCM homepageFrom the January 16, 1997, Arizona Daily Star and Starnet
REVIEW
American String Quartet last night at the Tucson Convention Center's Leo Rich Theatre.
By Ken Keuffel Jr.
The Arizona Daily Star
Nearly every string quartet claims an interest in performing new music. That seldom means, however, that new works get played more than once or twice.
As one disgruntled composer recently told me, a string quartet could easily perform 200 concerts, with each one featuring a different masterpiece by a dead composer.
Giampaolo Bracali's String Quartet No. 2, which last night received its Tucson premiere by the American String Quartet, may prove an exception to the aforementioned pattern.
An enthusiastic audience at the Tucson Convention Center's Leo Rich Theatre heard the third American performance of the Bracali, a 1995 six-movement work, in less than year. The work, which is dynamic and densely populated with interesting and well-developed ideas, received a thoughtful, exciting performance; it deserves several more hearings.
(Incidentally, Bracali, a Rome native who teaches at New York's Manhattan School of Music, last night became the first composer to hear his work performed at an Arizona Friends of Chamber Music Concert; he offered brief-but-effective introductory remarks before the performance.)
String Quartet No. 2, which was written for the American in memory of one of Bracali's former teachers, begins with an Elegia in which several sustained notes in each part effect an atmospheric blend of eerieness, mystery and melancholy.
The Elegia moves without break into a Preludio; this movement unleashes several accent-flavored tremolo chords. Last night, these chords bowled me over.
In the following humorous Scherzo, the instrumentalists trade neat little snippets of the same brief motif, using both plucking and saltando (i.e., making the bow bounce slightly on the string). Along the way, the first violin bows eerie sirenlike sounds.
In a Rapsodia, the violin and the cello enjoy extended cadenzalike sections that require the boldness and virtuosity heard last night.
While they played, the other parts often interjected a scary barrage of brief outbursts.
A stellar performance of Haydn's beloved Quartet in G Major, Opus 76, No. 1 opened the program. Most memorable here was the second Adagio sostenuto movement; the quartet kept each version of a simple choral-like tune intense and engaging.
Brahms' String Quartet in A minor, Opus 51, No. 2, was the concluding work. Its andante moderato second movement reveled in the understated authority of first violinist Peter Winograd's almost whispering solo. A sparkling rendition of the Gypsy dance-inspired finale brought the work to a rollicking conclusion.