The string quartet format has a long and distinguished history dating back 300 years, yet even today, composers flock to write for the specific possibilities that the line-up offers. This concert by the New York-based Attacca Quartet featured mainly pieces composed in the last 15 years or so, some of them arrangements of music originally written in a completely different idiom.
The general stylistic ambience was thoroughly of today, although Plan & Elevation by the prolific (and Pulitzer Prize-winning) Caroline Shaw incorporates fragments of Mozart and Ravel. They’re brief and affectionate quotes, inserted as if Shaw wants to get them out of her head: Ravel tiptoed in discreetly but Mozart burst in as if looking for an argument.
The piece, drawing inspiration from the gardens of Dumbarton Oaks, a grand mansion in Washington DC, meanders through a varied sequence of musical spaces, some dense with notes, others spare, occasionally almost skeletal. The rhythms rocked back and forth, at times gently, at others less so. Attacca brought out the melancholy that permeates much of Shaw’s string writing, as well as its variety of weight, from the slightest sigh to long laments or exuberant outbursts of pizzicato.
It was a performance to make you want to hear it again, immediately, but instead, and rather cheekily, Attacca followed it with the Ravel quartet that Shaw had so gleefully plundered. Even as they caressed the lyrical passages, the sound was aggressively forward, the tempos moving towards the hard-driven, not least in the pizzicatos. Now and then, the intensity of the attack (the group’s name fits its repertoire well) veered towards caricature but that was of a piece with their whole, no-holds-barred reading.
I’m not familiar with the no doubt impressive oeuvre of Flying Lotus, but viola player Nathan Schram’s arrangement of three of his short pieces skilfully transformed them into an attractive blend of post-minimalism and hard rock: cellist Andrew Lee’s headbanging was worthy of AC/DC.
With John Adams’ String Quartet we came closer still to minimalism (a label the composer dislikes). Written in 2008, it harks back to his earlier style. It opened with almost jazz phrasing from the cello, while the other players laid out a steady, undulating pulse which occasionally became jittery and jumpy. The Attacca seemed fully in the Adams idiom, weaving its intricate lines closely together, their playing strongly, even pugnaciously rhythmic.
A brief statement from Schram preceded the single encore: “It would be remiss not to celebrate this special time.” Oh no, I thought, surely not a coronation anthem? But yesterday was Star Wars day (May the 4th be with you), so instead of royal flummery we got a raucous account of John Williams’ Star Wars theme. What a relief.
