The St. Lawrence String Quartet ventured to the lobby of Crowell Concert Hall on Saturday evening, playing their instruments while gradually walking to the stage.
First violinist Geoff Nuttall introduced the work and provided background on the composer before the unusual performance. The Quartet came to the University as part of the Crowell Concert Series.
“We are unabashedly Canadian,” Nuttall said of the ensemble, explaining how they came to play the piece, which was composed in 1981 by the notoriously reclusive Canadian composer, R. Murray Shafer.
The first movement began with only the cellist, Christopher Costanza, on stage, in a solo wrought with ear-bending dissonances and riveting tonal adventures. The three other members played in competing harmony while entering slowly from the lobby and from backstage. The effect, while surprising, was also eerily like surround-sound. Shafer, described by Nuttall as “ultra-modern,” certainly succeeded in deconstructing the traditional quartet composition by physically placing the audience in the center of a chaotic musical conversation.
In his introduction, Nuttall gave the audience the permission to laugh, and a number of members took him up on that during the pandemonium of the second movement. The movement instructs the players to shout, yell and scream gibberish in various rhythms, often in opposition to the intonation of their instrumental notes. The growling and snarling served perhaps as a commentary in exaggeration, and warranted the shocked fascination of the audience.
“That movement, and the whole piece in general, was by far one of the coolest things I’ve seen at Wesleyan,” said audience member Jesse Appelman ’04.
“[The yelling] was just so unexpected,” said fellow concertgoer Tasha Clauson ’04. “I couldn’t help but laugh, but I was also really really intrigued.”
Yet the audience wasn’t laughing for the whole performance. The concert opened with “Yiddishbuk,” a piece composed for the St. Lawrence String Quartet by renowned contemporary composer Osvaldo Golijov. Nuttall referred to Golijov as “Ozzie” in his talk, emphasizing his friendship with the composer and love of his work.
“They came on stage like hungry cannibals and I felt a strange sense of tranquility,” Golijov said of the Quartet in the program notes to his own piece.
The ensemble lived up to Golijov’s preface, playing the emotionally exhausting composition with a mix of dignified authority and heart-wrenching expressivity. The piece, based on Kafka’s writings, in part commemorates three children interned in concentration camps by the Nazis. The Quartet is so taken with Golijov and his work that they recently recorded all of his chamber works.
“There has been so much experimental music here, but this just seemed so successful as well as experimental,” Appelman said. “All the pieces worked in contrast in this really neat way.”
Cushioned between the two contrasting modern works was Maurice Ravel’s “String Quartet in F Major,” the only quartet written by the lush and elaborate modernist composer. Nuttall, with bleached blonde hair and satin trousers, provided the visual drama as well as the floating melodic lines. Nuttall is known for his highly physical expressions, so much so that during recordings he has had to place pillows under his feet to muffle the stamping. Saturday evening was no different, with both Nuttall and second violinist Barry Shiffman musically dueling each other by rising out of their chairs, stomping, and pivoting in expression.
“I thought they struck a very interesting balance between the four of them,” said Chapin Kelly ’04. “Where the first violinist was so physically animated, the cellist and violist were much more reserved.”
These dramatic escapades are one distinctive part of the St. Lawrence String Quartet, enhancing their fourteen year history of being one of the most engaging ensembles around. “The New Yorker”, The New York Times and the Washington Post have heralded the Quartet as remarkable in their ability to rouse and connect with an audience.
Education is one of their significant endeavors in connecting to and engaging with audiences. The Quartet is Ensemble in Residence at Stanford University where they host an annual chamber music workshop for amateurs and bring concerts to such unlikely places as dorm room lounges.
Prior to the evening’s performance, they gave a master class for University chamber ensembles that afternoon.
“It sounds like the music is in a box. This isn’t that kind of music. In fact, what music should be played inside a box?” Costanza said, regarding one ensemble’s playing.
Not only did the St. Lawrence String Quartet step outside of the box on Saturday evening, but they discarded the box entirely, and made a new space for themselves, bringing the audience along with them.
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