Review: Miró Quartet continues its winning ways in Syracuse-area return
By: David Abrams

While the SU Orange was trouncing Villanova just a few miles down the road in front of an all-time college basketball record attendance of 34,616 spectators at the Carrier Dome, an equally brilliant team effort was in the making at Lincoln Middle School Auditorium. And while it may not have been a complete slam-dunk, the Miró Quartet dazzled the crowd with a winning performance of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Major that deserved its lengthy and enthusiastic standing ovation — if not high-fives — among the clearly delighted listeners in attendance.

Central New York chamber music enthusiasts are already familiar with the Miró Quartet, and in particular its handling of late-Beethoven and Schubert quartets, from the ensemble’s August 2008 appearance at the Skaneateles Festival — which over a two-day period included a pair of highly energetic performances of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 16 and Schubert’s Death and the Maiden Quartet. Yet while Saturday evening’s muscular rendition of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 13 appeared to pick up right where the group left off a year and a half ago, Miró’s cautious interpretation of Schubert’s String Quartet No. 15 in G major, D. 887 seemed far more reserved, oftentimes sacrificing spontaneity and enthusiasm for straightforward detail of execution.

Schubert’s final string quartet, which remained unpublished (and unplayed) until some two decades following his death in 1828, is a challenging work of considerable difficulty whose excessive length (about 45-minutes) and dramatic intensity places formidable demands not only upon the performers, but upon the listener as well. Like the composer’s cathartic C Major Quintet, the G Major Quartet demands nothing shy of a riveting performance to maintain that elusive bond that glues the listener to the listening experience.

Miró’s calculated interpretation of this warhorse, while technically clean and accurate in the execution of the work’s abundant melodic lines, was nevertheless musically sterile — with middle-of-the-road tempos that muted the contrasts between slow and fast movements necessary to garnish listener excitement and anticipation. Thus, the second (andante) movement seamed too hurried to savor Schubert’s melodic grace and elegance, while the slower-than-usual tempos of the third (scherzo) and fourth (allegro assai) movements produced phrases that appeared deliberate and calculating — as if the performers were checking the work, measure by measure, for balance and accuracy of pitch.

There were, to be sure, lots of ensemble touches that did work rather well — such as Miró’s sharply delineated dotted-rhythmic patterns throughout the über-dramatic first (allegro molto moderato) movement and tremolo recitative during the second (andante) movement, each of which convincingly captured the exaggerated melodrama of Schubert’s misery and pathos.

Whatever shortcomings may have been evident in the first-half of the two-work program seemed to evaporate following intermission, however, as Miró re-entered the auditorium for the Beethoven quartet with a renewed sense of purpose and determination — leading me to wonder whether the players unconsciously decided to save their strength for this monumental masterpiece.

The six-movement string quartet, performed on this occasion with Beethoven’s originally intended last movement (the Grosse Fuge, Op. 133), was written less than a year before Schubert’s String Quartet No. 15 — although it’s no exaggeration to say that at times it sounds as if it could have been written a century later. Like much of Beethoven’s output from his late period, the B-flat Major Quartet challenges the listener’s sensibilities with quickly alternating mood swings and tempo changes (recent scholarship by a University of Ottawa psychiatrist suggests that Beethoven was bi-polar), surrounded by a meditative introspection that belies the stylistic modus operandi of the composer’s more accessible (and widely appreciated) middle-period.

As the story goes, Beethoven couldn’t bring himself to attend the work’s premiere in Vienna on March 21, 1826, electing instead to wait at a tavern nearby. Had it been the Miró Quartet who premiered the work, Beethoven would have done well to finish his beer and quickly proceed to the concert hall.

The difference between the program’s two halves was soon apparent, as Miró drew warmth and tenderness from Beethoven’s affectionate adagio introduction and then delivered the following allegro with spontaneity and alacrity. Ensemble was tight throughout the movement, in spite of a brief miscue on the part of the cellist, with cleanly articulated inner voicings (second violin and viola) complementing a four-voice texture buoyed by first-violinist Daniel Ching and tidily anchored by cellist Joshua Gindele.

In the second (presto) movement, the ensemble navigated the spunky four-measure phrases built upon the circle-of-fifths with grace and élan, and Ching’s wild triplet argeggiations sang sweetly and securely above the three other voices. Following this movement, and again following the fourth, Miró took a brief moment to re-tune the instruments — a sign that the group takes issues of intonation seriously. Indeed, except for the first movement of the Schubert, Miró’s pitch throughout the evening was right on target.

Other signs of good ensemble interplay were evident in the passing of melodic figures from instrument-to-instrument in the third (andante con moto) movement, and especially during the fourth-movement danza tedesca (German dance) — where unaccompanied melodic motifs bouncing seamlessly from player-to-player would surely have pleased even SU Orange coach, Jim Boeheim.

Led by Ching’s beautiful playing, the sensuous and aria-like Cavatina (fifth) movement, while perhaps just a tad too fast for maximum expression, produced a suitably meditative effect and poignancy. Beethoven is said to have written this tender movement “…amid sorrow and tears.”

Although Beethoven had substituted a shorter, separate movement for the finale of the B-flat Major Quartet following its premiere, the lengthy original movement (now known as the Grosse Fuge, Op. 133) is commonly used today, as it was for this performance.

There’s lots of fire and brimstone within the measures of this abstract (and at times abstruse) movement, which demands brash and uninhibited playing that oftentimes borders on the extreme. Miró delivered the sharply edged, turbulent fugal subjects and counter-subjects with panache, reaching deeply into the music to arrive at the raw, emotional core of a musical genius reaching the final strides of his life. When the final cadence sounded, the usually mild-mannered Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music crowd erupted into boisterous shouts of approval, and a prolonged — and well deserved — standing ovation.

http://blog.cnycafemomus.com/2010/02/28/feb-27-miro-quartet.aspx