 "Photo: Courtesy of calderquartet.com")
Béla Bartók: to musicophiliacs just the mention of the Hungarian composer's name can draw headaches or admiration, polite recognition of the composer's contributions to music or an outright dismissal of his music.
Even more impassioned reactions may be drawn from musicians who are informed that they are to play, or rather, attempt to play, Bartók's music. And yet there a few brave souls, true artists, I would say, who would voluntarily attack the music of Bartók.
I say attack because one cannot leisurely sit down and play or listen to Bartók as one would listen to some quaint, conventional quartet by the Mozarts of the world or the basic, if not sloppy, rock bands of the post-MTV age.
No no, to play Bartók one must be willing to surrender ideas of harmonic convention and basic notions of musical phrasing which most modern ears unconsciously take for granted. To play Bartók is to make sense of cacophony, to create symmetry of the asymmetrical, to attack the ugly in full force to create the beautiful.
Or at least that's the goal.
Many a mediocre quartet has attempted to play Bartók with the results being somewhat less than successful. All too many times, curious music lovers will listen to second-class interpretations of Bartók only to quickly shut off the atonal screeching, the dissonant screaming that comes of such less-than satisfactory performances.
As the Calder Quartet began to play the first measures of the concert program last Tuesday, it was clear that this was not to be one of those performances.
The influence of Richard Strauss on Bartók was brought out by the subtle understanding of the music by the Calder four, who demonstrated, if anything, a mastery of modern experimentations of music.
Even the playfulness of Bartók's music was executed by the Quartet. To hear musical phrases literally bounce from player to player, from violin to viola to cello-these things are rarely heard or even brought out of these musical performances. That the Calder four could do so without a second thought clearly showed why this relatively youthful quartet is quickly climbing to the top of the art music world.
This is not to say that the performance was flawless-there were a few awkward moments where viola player Jonathan Moerschel had trouble getting the viola to tune which, at worst, interrupted the continuity in between movements, and the folk influences in Bartók's music weren't quite "folk" enough, not to mention the backstage staff was heard chatting away towards the end of the program (yes, we could hear you).
The minor distractions, however, were just that, minor. It is clear from the sublime performance just why the Calder Quartet has been featured on the "Late Show with David Letterman," among other places.
It may not be too absurd to predict that, as the members of the Kronos Quartet-who played a concert last November-slowly age, that this youthful collection of four string players may very well be the heirs to art-music royalty.
The Calder Quartet will return to play the other half of Bartók's string quartets in April.
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