Sunday was a beautiful crisp fall day. It was the perfect day for another concert in the Berkshires. Unfortunately the concert did not live up to the standards Mother Nature provided.
It all started well. The Juilliard has a new first Violinist, Nick Eanet who was apparently making his debut with the quartet. I think there are still a few bugs to be worked out in this newly evolving ensemble.
The first work, Schubert's Quartet in A Minor, Op 29, the "Rosamunde" was a disappointment. G had taken his hearing aides out for some reason and was upset that he couldn't hear the music. I told him it was a blessing. Now Schubert is not something I usually associate with the Juilliard's spare muscular style, but I was willing to give them a chance, and Eanet's playing was sweet and melodic. But the Schubert was flat and boring and a little too spare, while the sentiment was almost sickly sweet and filled with schmaltz, as if we had the Juilliard Quartet auditioning for Lawrence Welk.
But that wasn't even the worst of it. There was some kind of shifting scraping, wheezing echo that occurred only during play. I couldn't identify it. It sounded like a cross between a scrape and the sound of wind in a tunnel. I looked around me. I looked at the musicians. I quickly decided that it was coming from the first violin but I couldn't figure out why or what it was. I couldn't imagine if something was wrong with the violin. It was distracting from the music in the extreme, and it was quite audible over the music. I was a good ways back in the small concert hall, in the 13th row.
Between the first and second pieces, my fellow audience members in the rows around me were wondering what it was, but none of us could quite figure it out. I was determined to leave at intermission, after the Bartok. But I didn't. The Bartok was much to excellent, dry and astringent, thrilling in parts, with that devastating sense of emptiness that is such a shocking ending for the 2nd Quartet in A Minor, Op 17. Yes there was that same wheezing, foghorn like sound, but it was less frequent. And the music was just too good.
I stayed and listened to the Beethoven Quartet in F Major, Op 135, which is one of my favorites. I should have left. During intermission the director of the program had told G that he thought the sound was heavy breathing on the part of the cellist. This thought held my attention for a while (the playing did not always manage that). I quickly determined that it couldn't be the cellist though. It had to be the first violin, but I still couldn't determine what was making the noise. The Beethoven was not bad, parts of it were wonderful, parts were only acceptable. The noise was a distraction, and not only to me.
The group played an encore, a Mendelssohn scherzo, which is where I figured it out. It was the first violinist, not the violin and he was breathing heavily while he played, rasping and almost sighing a couple of times. There was an audible emotive sigh at one point in the Mendelssohn that killed the whole thing for me.
The concert would have been much better had I not been so annoyed, and I was very annoyed. I don't know if Mr. Eanet is an emotive breather during performance or if he just had a cold. If it is the former I hope he will learn to control it. The changing dynamic in a group when one member leaves is always difficult and I think that Eanet shows great promise. I would be interested in hearing the group again, perhaps after a few more performances, perhaps this was just a rough start.
Too bad! -- but at least you got to exercise your very effective listening skills!
Posted by: materfamilias | Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 11:14 PM