Until November 18th, Alice Tully Hall is home to the Lincoln Center’s “White Light’ Festival, a classical music series featuring concerts ranging from traditional repertory, such as solo Bach and Handel’s Creation, to intriguing cross-disciplinary concerts, including an opera based on Japanese Noh, Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and piano-dance partnerships. All feature a central theme, articulated by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt: “I could compare my music to white light, which contains all colors. Only a prism can divide the colors and make them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener.”
A Prismatic Setting
If Alice Tully Hall was a shade, it would be an icy blue-green. Attendees stood last Thursday before its rigorously geometrical exterior supported by rigid cantilevers -- a jutting phantom ship in glass, lit in cool emerald. The lobby’s limestone bar snakes along the back of the glass wall, and it is from that vantage point those who attended the pre-concert lecture by scholar Andrew Shenton conversed and enjoyed their drinks. The fragility of the glass wall contrasts with the weighty pillars inside and allows the interior to seemingly meld with the sidewalk outside. We were ushered into the hall. Adjustable lights shone on the smooth surfaces of African hardwood and gave the hall a contrasting carmine glow.
The Poesy of Young Love
The Takács Quartet’s reputation precedes them, but the four members -- violinists Edward Dusinberre and Harumi Rhodes, violist Geraldine Walther, and cellist András Fejér -- appeared modestly before the public and sat down without ceremony. The ensemble is widely recognized for its innovative programming, and this evening was no exception. The booklet notes listed two works both possessing a quintessentially Viennese character; one by a young, pre-modernist Webern and the other by Schumann. Throughout the sixty-five-minute long concert, we vicariously experienced the symbiosis of the performers through their highly coloristic and vivid interpretations, which were refracted in the subtlest nuances like so many iridescent points of ardent sunlight. One could apprehend the rapt attention they commanded from their audience in the way many leaned forward in shared communion, as if they were acutely aware that they were receiving a gift of the most intimate nature.
Webern’s Langsamer Satz is not often performed. It is a magically fleet and ardent piece in the tradition of Liszt, Wagner, Strauss, and Mahler. In this reviewer's opinion, all four instrumentalists evoked its inner chimeric whirlwinds and diaphanous tenderness with great sensitivity and warmth. Listeners did not need to read the program notes on the circumstances of its composition to understand that this is love music of the profoundest nature. The 21-year-old composer, who worked under the tutelage of Arnold Schoenberg, undertook a hiking trip in Lower Austria as a respite from his studies. He was not merely enthralled by the lush charms of the countryside; he was accompanied by his cousin, Wilhelmine Mörtl, who later became his wife. Webern wrote ecstatically and quasi-mystically about the experience in his diary, as quoted in the program notes:
"To walk forever like this among the flowers, with my dearest one beside me, to feel oneself so entirely at one with the Universe, without care, free as the lark in the sky above -- Oh what splendor... when night fell (after the rain) the sky shed bitter tears but I wandered with her along a road. A coat protected the two of us. Our love rose to infinite heights and filled the Universe. Two souls were enraptured."
The Takacs Quartet allowed us to imbibe the rapture of such moments by masterfully highlighting the variegated textures of the instrumental writing, in this writer’s view. The searing, adamantine beauty of the opening melody, played with golden tone and liquid phrasing by first violinist Dusinberre, gave way to the pizzicato of cellist Fejér, rendered with a delicacy evoking gossamer. From such tender beginnings, violist Walther and violinist Rhodes enjoined their own iterations of the melodies, which resounded without any trace of gemütlichkeit in delicate slides that descended like caresses. In such a way, the musicians awakened the image of a flower unfolding its fragile petals of the finest textures -- no doubt the flowers of Webern’s fervent memory. This was beautifully-paced music. The musicians aptly conveyed the moments in which the its subtlety, contained for example in the declamatory elegance of violinist Rhodes’ playing and the ensemble’s muted quality of sound, transformed gradually into a sumptuous declaration of love. The impact of the elegiac thematic material was heightened by the stress all musicians put on the weeping descending interval. Listeners no doubt would recognize in that moment the aching tenderness one experiences for example while gazing at the face of one's newborn. When the cello assumed the melodic line in sotto voce, the effect not only evoked the hush of nightfall according to the composer's recollection, but also the feeling of something being too beautiful to be real for normal utterance. The ensemble's synergy is such that independent lines were taken over by other instruments so amorphously that we could not trace their origin until each burst forth in tremolo cascades.
Beauty and Pain in Schubert's Quintet
As the performers walked off stage and the final chord lingered and resonated in the audience’s spirits, some of us read the program notes on the quintet by Franz Schubert. They informed us that the masterpiece was written shortly before the composer’s tragic and untimely death at 31 years old, and that he composed it with no hope of a performance in sight. (It was discovered and premiered posthumously, some twenty-two years after his passing). It is a work in five movements finessed like amber, with bottomless pathos and intimations of sublimity. In this concert, the chamberistic framework has allowed for the unusual addition of a guest cellist, as the group welcome the youthful vigor of acclaimed virtuoso David Requiro. The opening chord emerged from stillness and the statement was left suspended -- a faint promise waiting to be unveiled through struggle in the unexpected harmonic turns of the piece. The musicians rendered the intricacies of the interplaying voices as if engaged in a sonorous conversation. In the following movement, which the pianist Arthur Rubinstein evoked as “the entrance into heaven”, the naive calling motif of the violin was illustrated with a vulnerability that highlighted the profound spiritual depth expressed in the burnishment of the shifting harmonies. We could not contain our admiration between pieces and muttered brava in the tense silences between movements, especially after the raucous scherzo which seemed to have been enthusiastically and rhythmically driven by Requiro; he only let the vigor of the piece relent in his mournful and reluctant duet with his fellow cellist. The final allegretto sounded out in the hall like a capricious dance with rhapsodic, gypsy verve, ending with a thrilling presto passage.
Despite the euphoria of the ending notes, we were left with the memory of the adagio which returned in the final and jarring C-major chord against a dissonant D flat. Those who know of the pain in searching for peace amid anguish -- as Schubert did in composing this masterpiece in the months preceding his death -- would be moved to hear it played with such expressive devotion.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
WHEN:
White Light Festival runs until November 18th, 2018.
WHERE:
Alice Tully Hall
1941 Broadway
New York City, NY
TICKETS:
For information and tickets visit the White Light Festival website or call 212.721.6500.
Visit the Takacs Quartet website to view their schedule of upcoming performances.
