Review: Must it be? It must be!  The American Miró Quartet in the Alte Oper
English Translation: Jason Denner

Beethoven ended his string quartet production surprisingly simply. In
the group of five late string quartets, the F-major work does not have
the greatest weight and, in comparison to the Große Fuge, which was
separately published as op. 133 after Beethoven’s death, it strikes a
relatively mild note. Appropriately, the American Miro Quartet played
this last work comfortably unpretentiously. Even in the Finale with
the heading “The Difficultly Made Decision”, Daniel Ching, Sandy
Yamamoto (Violin), John Largess (Viola) and Joshua Gindele (Cello) did
not tell a story of passion as part of the chamber music series of the
Frankfurt Museum Society in the Mozart-Saal of the Alte Oper – with
the exception of the Grave section.

The interplay of the composer’s question-and-answer motifs (Must it
be? It must be!) had in fact something humorous in its approach:
Beethoven arranged them first, according to one anecdote, into a
little playful canon. Nevertheless, the Miro Quartet brought out the
wild dynamic changes and accents in the previous movements and
remained closely faithful to the indications in the score.

The ensemble, founded in 1995, interpreted the middle movement of the
string quartet op. 11 from Samuel Barber, in another form and arranged
for string orchestra famous as the Adagio, just as true to the text:
with a covered, but of course, in the emphatic ascent of the unending
melody, expressive sound and a timeless expression. The effect of the
middle movement is especially interesting in the context of the
framing “Molto Allegro” movements, which were not particularly
advanced for 1936 when the work was composed, but culminate quite
dissonantly for the Neo-Romantic Barber.

Dvoraks (American) String Quartet in F-Major op. 96 was similarly
convincing in its balance of sentiment and clarity. At the most, the
vibrato playing of the first violin in the upper register during the
first movement sounded a bit too sweet. But directly in the more
discrete passages, he and his companions followed their hearts. The
contoured, precise playing of the violist was especially enjoyable.
The Finale received a strong ending: elastically spirited and with
rythmic drive.