TinAlley String Quartet!

I finally found my black folder. Whew. Also, the music locations have now been consolidated down to eight places.

The featherpuff cinnamon rolls are baking, the upma is gently stewing, and I'm held hostage here till they finish, after which I shall consume them for dinner. (Yes, I know. I'm a bad person. But this bread has cottage cheese, ricotta cheese, eggs, and milk powder, so it is loaded with protein. And it is a Saturday, after all.) Mmmm. This will yield enough breakfast and lunch to last me a week or so.

I have been dying to write about the concert I attended last Sunday at the Petit Trianon in San Jose, but just haven't had the time to process my thoughts. The TinAlley String Quartet performed, and they were just utterly fantastic. In fact, I was a little sad on their behalf that there was not any press coverage of them--not a one-- because they deserved at least some kind of real review.

Sure, they had to compete with performances by the San Jose Ballet, the Silicon Valley Orchestra's performances of Beethoven's 9th and Brahms, and Yuja Wang+Neville Marriner dynamic duo performance up in the city. So perhaps the critics were out chasing these bigger fish. (They were. See here, here, and here.)
And 90 percent of the audience at the TinAlley concert didn't look like the blogging ilk. Such is the nature of the performing arts, I guess. And yet. I want this quartet to survive. And come back to this area. And give more concerts like the one they did last Sunday.

I realize that we're only one-third into the year, but of the concerts I've attended this year (all-Shostakovich, Carter/Messiaen, Yuja Wang's recital, Beethoven's Eroica, Gyorgy Orban's mass/choral concert, Bach organ recital, plus this one), this one was my favorite.

It's a tough call between the Yuja Wang recital and this string quartet, since as well as this quartet played, in the former case, we are talking about a performance by someone on the order of (dare I say) genius level, so in terms of pure technical verve, Wang wins, but the combination of factors--1. the absolutely fabulous acoustics of the hall, 2. the programming choice and the fact that the pieces the TinAlley SQ played made more sense, so I could appreciate it more, 3. the intimate size of the venue and my wonderful seats that allowed me to sit back far enough that the balance was perfect and be close enough to observe their facial expressions, 4. the concert format whereby a Q&A with the performers following the performance broke down the traditional audience/performer barrier, and 5. a really attentive and appreciative audience that made minimal noises--made this quartet concert my favorite thus far. Oh, and I mentioned that their playing was absolutely brilliant, right?

But overall, I also understand string quartets a little better than solo pianists.

In the Wang recital, while I could recognize her technical prowess, and the beauty and grace of her playing, I'm not familiar enough with the Liszt B-minor sonata to fully appreciate how she played the piece with brilliant rubato, as one reviewer put it.

But with string quartets, when they play a Haydn with minimal vibrato, I can appreciate that. When they sound a little brighter for the Bartok and then I later find out that they tune their A to 442 for that piece, I smile and nod in understanding. When the first violinist, heretofore the most prominent texture, suddenly lets his playing fade ever so slightly so that the cellist's low notes come out, I can appreciate that as well. Thus, in that sense, string quartets "make sense" to me.

So what follows is more a subjective gushing than an actual review, which I’m not qualified to write.

Their program consisted of Haydn Op. 76 #5, Bartok #4, and the Mendelssohn Op. 13.

In the Haydn, as I mentioned, they used very little vibrato. Actually, the cellist used slightly more than the others, but overall, it was more ornamental than being part of the piece. Which is a nice way to play the Haydn: straight, clean, honest sound, bereft of fancy ornamentation. The Largo section (the longish second movement) was mellifluous and lovely.

The highlight of the evening for me, however, was the Bartok 4--my first live performance. It was electrifying--rife with raw excitement and vibrancy.

Of the six Bartok quartets, my favorites (CD listening-wise) have always been 3 and 5. I know that 4 is supposed to be the "best" one of the six, but the first movement never quite did it for me, and the pizzicato movement--well, even the Budapest SQ recording just doesn't do justice to how exciting this movement and the con-sordino movement can potentially be when witnessed live. I think I'm now a Bartok 4 convert. Though perhaps it's unfair to compare great recordings of 3 and 5 to a riveting live performance of 4.

In the recordings, movement 1 is usually my least favorite movement. The texture crawls like a spider and is a bit hard to grasp. Conversely, the middle movement is my favorite. However, when played live (at least by this string quartet), the first and pizzicato movements were my favorite, while the third seemed the least interesting--except when the cellist played her solo with such poise and grandeur.

Actually, as an irrelevant aside, I really enjoyed watching the cellist. Perhaps I'm used to watching more male cellists (Ives quartet, St. Lawrence SQ, Emerson, Escher, etc.), but she was so graceful. Yet, her playing wasn't any less powerful for it. Even the Bartok, despite the sheer amount of energy and concentration I can only imagine this piece demanded of its participants, she played it with the same disposition and grace as she did the Haydn and Mendelssohn. While her other quartet-mates at times had their brows furrowed in concentration during this piece, the cellist seemed to play this without any external evidence of strain. It was only later in the Q & A that I found out that the Bartok demanded 120 percent of her concentration and that she was actually nervous!

I also enjoyed the prestissimo (con sordino) movement, which was exquisite. Ahhhh.

Despite how messy and muddled the Bartok can potentially be (and I have listened to muddled recordings of this where the notes are not quite attacked right on), their playing was really "clean" and refined. And by that, I mean that there was minimal squeaking, and minimal attempting-to-slide-into-the-note-and-shroud-it-via-a-half-tone-range-vibrato. Perhaps I'm exaggerating on the almost-half-a-tone vibrato, but I have heard this in professional string quartets and among orchestra players.

The only part that sounded slightly muddled to me (and I couldn't tell whether this was an ensemble thing or whether this is just in the music) was the second quarter of the last movement of the Bartok, which sounded more like an orchestral texture than string quartet writing.

The Mendelssohn was also well-played, and I think one of this quartet's signature pieces, but I think that they should have programmed it before the Bartok. After the stunning performance of the Bartok, nothing could compare or engage my interest in the same way. The Bartok was just a tough act to follow. However, the violin 1's bright and clear sounds really came out in this Mendelssohn piece.

While they all played excellently, the 1st violinist’s playing was something else. He is all but 23 or 24. (He is also quite cute to boot. And no, he looked nothing like the pictures on their website.) I can also tell he has a bit of a wicked sense of humor, because evidently, he was the one who sprang the Bartok 4 on this quartet, without telling them how hard it was. (He played an orchestral arrangement before and only told them how much he enjoyed playing it and that this quartet should maybe give it a try. The other quartet members evidently called each other and grumbled about how difficult this piece is, which I thought was funny.) Also, perhaps this was my imagination, but I could've sworn that some time during the Bartok, when everyone else's foreheads were deeply furrowed in concentration while they were playing a ridiculously difficult passage, I saw an ever-so-fleeting vestige of a nefarious grin on the 1st violin out of the corner of my eye.

Despite being a relatively newly formed group, the ensemble sounded (to me) like they really meshed well together. Even in many professional quartets, sometimes the ensemble playing is uneven. In this ensemble, there were times the 1st violin's playing stood out the most, but for the most part, I liked their ensemble playing.

In particular, I really enjoyed the cellist and violist duets. They had a really good chemistry between them (playing-wise, that is) and played wonderfully together. This came out particularly in the Haydn.

And now, those piping-hot cinnamon rolls beckon.