Tuesday, October 15, 2024, the Friends of Chamber Music launched our 77th season and welcomed our friends back to the Vancouver Playhouse with a the first concert in Canada from the Gropius Quartet. This German ensemble is made up of two married couples, all of whom completed part of their studies at the Juilliard School in New York. The group is named after the groundbreaking architect Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus school of art, architecture, and design (and who incidentally married Alma Mahler roughly four years after composer Gustav Mahler’s death). The Gropius Quartet aims to follow the Bauhaus ethos of seeking to strip away ornament and discover the core beauty of objects, or in this case, music.
And, as some other modern string quartets do, this ensemble sees the two violinists alternate who sits in the first and second violin chairs.
This season the Friends are not printing full programmes on paper, but rather are distributing a single sheet to audience members. That sheet lists the musicians, with a truncated biography, and lists the pieces of music and the movements within each one. The full programme notes are available in advance of each concert online in PDF form at the website: www.friendsofchambermusic.ca
This concert’s programme of music from three centuries started with Joseph Haydn’s 18th Century String Quartet in E-flat Major, Opus 33 No. 2 “The Joke”. Friedemann Eichorn, first violin for the Haydn quartet, explained a bit about the music from the stage. He encouraged audience members to listen for the sound of cats in the third movement, and warned us that we may fall for the musical “joke” in the finale.
With Friedemann leading, he was joined by Indira Koch, second violin (and first violin for the Shostakovich quartet), Alexia Eichorn, viola, and Wolfgang Emmanuel Schmidt, cello. The performance of this truly Classical music was bright and airy, with an elegance and lightness of phrasing ideally suited to Haydn’s music. The balance amongst the musicians was clean, and the promised cat-like slides in the third movement mentioned earlier were there to be heard – but they were not exaggerated into caricature. That said, the group did play up the joke ending in the finale to catch us out, and it worked – more than once. Those who were there will know what I mean.
The next music on the programme offered a great contrast and what felt like the deepest emotions of the evening to be evoked by music, jumping to a composition from the second half of the 20th Century. Indira Koch and Friedemann Eichorn switched chairs (and moved their iPads on stands and wireless foot pedals) so that she was first violin for Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor, Opus 110. This was the audience’s consensus for the highpoint of the evening. Giving a steely sheen to their tone, all four players brought a cool surface to the passionate and tragic depth of this growling and keening music. The repeated notes of Shostakovich’s signature motif traversed from one instrument to another as the music structures wound around them. This was a great performance of a fabulous piece of chamber music. And it was a distinctive interpretation and would not replace the impact of hearing the same music played live by another outstanding ensemble, for example the Borodin Quartet, who played it for Friends as part of their complete Shostakovich Quartet Cycle concerts in May 2015. But it was this performance, this week, that brought cheers and bravos from our enthusiastic audience.
After intermission, the Gropius Quartet returned to the stage, with Friedemann Eichorn back in the first violin chair, to play the great Romantic 19th Century music of Felix Mendelssohn, his String Quartet No 6 in F Minor, Opus 80. This music was written in memory of his beloved sister, composer Fanny Mendelssohn. The music is full of melancholy, even tragedy, as well as sweeping memory and ultimate acceptance. Timely, because the composer soon suffered from his final illness and died only months after finishing work on the quartet. On this evening, the quartet played the music with both technical brilliance and heartfelt feeling. That said, to my ears, the interpretation did not include the almost-tremulous poignance that I have encountered with past hearings. Perhaps my innards had already been overworked by the power and suffering within the beauty of Shostakovich’s music before the interval. Regardless of my own odd take, this music capped an evening of masterful artistry, and drew an extended ovation from our audience.
We were rewarded for our enthusiasm with an encore, the finale of Antonin Dvorak’s String Quartet in F Major, Opus 96 “American”. This music was offered with balance, taste (both fine and rough, where it suited), and an autumnal warmth. After such delightful music-making, the musicians left the stage to a standing ovation.
Building on the excitement of this first concert, we look forward eagerly to our second concert featuring the second appearance for us of the Ariel Quartet on Tuesday, October 29, 2024. Please click on the link for tickets and information: https://friendsofchambermusic.ca/concert/ariel-quartet-3/