On a recent Friday night in the vast atrium space of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, six string players took their place in a semi-circle and began performing the first movement of one of Mozart’s most sanctified sonatas. For the first five minutes or so, the musicians played his String Quartet No 15 in D Minor exactly as it was written until, suddenly, the conductor began acting like the host of a bingo game by throwing a six-sided die, with each side representing a particular player.
“Two,” the conductor cried, before pointing at the second violinist, who immediately stopped what she was performing and began to play her part in the piece back from the start, while the others soldiered on through the score. “Four,” the conductor called after his next toss, pointing at the cellist who, likewise, went back to the beginning of his part, in the process establishing a pattern of calls and restarts that continued for the next 25 minutes. Amid the unfolding drama, one of the world’s most well-worn classical works was twisted into something strangely fresh, resulting in not so much a deconstruction of Mozart’s work as a reformation of it, with each component treated like a separate piece in a bold new puzzle.
