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A Light Touch for Dark Music New York
Lowenstein Building, Fordam University
11/20/2024 -
Dorothy Rudd Moore: Modes
Dmitri Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 14 in F Sharp Minor, Opus 142
Lawrence Kramer: String Quartet No. 3 “Beginning with Time” (World Premiere)
Cassatt String Quartet: Muneko Otani, Jennifer Leshnower (Violins), Emily Brandenburg (Viola), Gwen Krosnick (Cello)
Cassatt String Quartet (© David Acosta)
“For some reason, people think that music must tell us only about the pinnacles of the human spirit, or at least about highly romantic villains. Most people are average, neither black nor white. They’re gray. A dirty shade of gray. And it’s in that vague gray middle ground that the fundamental conflicts of our age take place.”
Dmitri Shostakovich
From the first dark fugues of the late Dorothy Rudd Moore’s Modes for String Quartet through a Shostakovich Quartet with secret symbols, to Lawrence Kramer’s pre‑universe sounds, the Cassatt String Quartet belied their informal friendly performing guise. The three works, set on the top floor of Fordham University were serious, sometimes moody, but always showing the expertise of these four players.
First, if one was looking for chamber music, the Fordham “Lounge” had rare ideal acoustics. Not an iota of resonance, not a scintilla of imbalance.
That, however, had one negative consequence. So fine were the sounds, that one could almost hear the fingers plucking at the pizzicati or playing the melodies. (A disc review would say it was “miked too close”.)
The serious tone of the recital was assuaged by the personal, scholarly/humorous introductions by cellist Gwen Krosnick for the first half. Those words warmed up an apparently learnéd audience for the initial work.
D. R. Moore, L. Kramer (© Bert Andrews/Fordham University)
I had never heard music by Dorothy Rudd Moore before. But that was natural, since a plethora of African-American 20th Century composers were hidden away until around a decade ago. Ms Moore’s name was new, but her craft (and oftentimes her art) were telling and compelling.
The Cassatt foursome first movements displayed the craft with great sensibility. A series of fugues were on the cusp of academic craftsmanship, The second movement, though was almost romantic (in a shadowy way). We started with a long viola solo, continuing with more instrumental partnerships. And both Cassatt and Moore opened up for a broad original finale.
Like Bartók’s string quartets, which seemed Hungarian but were totally original, Modes, without a single jazzy or dance note, swung along, in what could only be called Yankee glee.
The final work came from Fordham’s own Lawrence Kramer, and this Third String Quartet shows that he must be a highly knowledgeable and highly disciplined teacher.
On the one hand, this displayed through five movements of contrapuntal skill, changes of harmony and meter, and–until the last movement–a kind of chthonic sobriety.
Then again, Mr. Kramer’s subtitle–Beginning with Time–could have been a quantum cosmologist’s dream piece. Time began with the Big Bang (actually–invisible and silent). Mr. Kramer’s work was a series moody slow movements. This was hardly serial music, but the dark interplays of the instruments led through enough thorny passages that one would like to hear it once more.
The centerpiece here had the unfortunate position of being unalloyed genius between two pretty good pieces.
This Dmitri Shostakovich’s 14th String Quartet, written two years before his death, could be called cryptic. Yet that would say nothing. Like Beethoven’s last quartets, the 14th leads one through an almost incohesive three movements. In fact (as a respite from the other two works), the piece started with a jaunty little tune which obviously was transfigured into dissonant chords, which ended with a whimper.
The second movement, like the first, began with a melodic little tune, which was twisted, played 12‑tone fashion and left one transfixed until the final Allegretto-Adagio. These Shostakovich’s measures had secret cyphers. (Not his own, though. He composed the piece at Benjamin Britten’s home, so probably withdrew his usual ego‑notes.)
This, more than the Moore or Kramer, was the Cassatt String Quartet test. To their credit, from the first violin and cello solo to the whispering finale, they performed with cries and laughter of a dying man. Yes, Shostakovich enjoyed his little tunes and secret signs. But the Cassatt conversed with remote inscrutable partnerships . Finishing with a whisper...a whimper...an ending that not even the finest quartets would be able to decipher.
Harry Rolnick
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