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Tokyo Quartet Hones Edges of Beethoven, Bartok
ANN ARBOR - String quartets may have been written before Beethoven and since Bartok, but their bold and brilliant works remain the touchstones of the form. In a mesmerizing concert Sunday night at Rackham Auditorium, the Tokyo String Quartet paired the two B's and reminded us that indeed the same letter serves for alpha and omega.
The Beethoven example was one of his earliest quartets, No. 5 in A major from the group of six published as his Op. 18. While it displays neither the Olympian grandeur of Beethoven's middle quartets nor the radical thinking of the late works, Op. 18, No. 5 does reveal the genius of a composer who was not yet 30 years old and already a venturesome master of the form.
But of course the young Beethoven was also a child of his time, and the beauty of the Tokyo Quartet's performance was its expression of Beethoven's warm humor, rhythmic daring and harmonic surprises within a plausible classical framework of elegance and poise. Here was sunny playing with a distinctive edge of wit, perfectly integrated ensemble that still allowed room for four individual voices.
The Bartok was the fifth of his six string quartets, a work penned almost 75 years ago and still inspires awe with its conflicting rhythms, polytonality and sheer technical complexity. Yet so effortless -- fluent, supple and expressive -- was the Tokyo Quartet's playing that the music on the stands could just as well have been Beethoven.
Like the opening movement's ferocious stop-and-go rhythms and the central movement's close-order demands on ensemble wizardry, the sparkling music of Bartok's two slow episodes came across with grace and buoyancy.
With the concert's second half, the Tokyo turned from the string quartet to Brahms' Clarinet Quintet. Their collaborator was Sabine Meyer, who sprang to international attention in 1982 when, at age 23, she was appointed by conductor Herbert von Karajan as the first woman member of the Berlin Philharmonic.
Meyer is an extraordinary clarinetist with a luxurious solo sound and an unfailing sense of her place in the ensemble. The real joy of this Brahms was the melding of strings and clarinet into a pliant, lyrical whole - not a star turn for a soloist but an eloquent, illuminating expression of chamber music. At unhurried tempos, the five players indulged Brahms at his most songful and romantic, a perfect capstone to a splendid night.
The Beethoven example was one of his earliest quartets, No. 5 in A major from the group of six published as his Op. 18. While it displays neither the Olympian grandeur of Beethoven's middle quartets nor the radical thinking of the late works, Op. 18, No. 5 does reveal the genius of a composer who was not yet 30 years old and already a venturesome master of the form.
But of course the young Beethoven was also a child of his time, and the beauty of the Tokyo Quartet's performance was its expression of Beethoven's warm humor, rhythmic daring and harmonic surprises within a plausible classical framework of elegance and poise. Here was sunny playing with a distinctive edge of wit, perfectly integrated ensemble that still allowed room for four individual voices.
The Bartok was the fifth of his six string quartets, a work penned almost 75 years ago and still inspires awe with its conflicting rhythms, polytonality and sheer technical complexity. Yet so effortless -- fluent, supple and expressive -- was the Tokyo Quartet's playing that the music on the stands could just as well have been Beethoven.
Like the opening movement's ferocious stop-and-go rhythms and the central movement's close-order demands on ensemble wizardry, the sparkling music of Bartok's two slow episodes came across with grace and buoyancy.
With the concert's second half, the Tokyo turned from the string quartet to Brahms' Clarinet Quintet. Their collaborator was Sabine Meyer, who sprang to international attention in 1982 when, at age 23, she was appointed by conductor Herbert von Karajan as the first woman member of the Berlin Philharmonic.
Meyer is an extraordinary clarinetist with a luxurious solo sound and an unfailing sense of her place in the ensemble. The real joy of this Brahms was the melding of strings and clarinet into a pliant, lyrical whole - not a star turn for a soloist but an eloquent, illuminating expression of chamber music. At unhurried tempos, the five players indulged Brahms at his most songful and romantic, a perfect capstone to a splendid night.
— Lawrence B. Johnson,
The Detroit News
