Kontras Quartet explores a rich variety of American music from Ives to Wolfe
On Friday evening, the Kontras Quartet returned to Ganz Hall at Roosevelt University for their fourth annual appearance as part of the American Music Project.
What stood out in the quartet’s playing in four of the five pieces on the all-American program was their warm sound, so unlike the astringent tang common in performances of modern music. Their tone, their phrasing, and even hints of portamento were more Romantic than modernistic.
This was marvelously effective in the two works that began and ended the program: Copland’s Two Pieces for String Quartet and Ives’s String Quartet No. 1, “From the Salvation Army.”
The Copland is an early work, written in his twenties, when his French training was still audible, and his attempts to capture the American West had not yet begun.
In her solo in the first movement, cellist Jean Hatmaker made her instrument throb like a voice. The dynamic climax Kontras reached at the movement’s end was powerful, without being forceful. The duet between first violinist Eleanor Bartsch and violist Ben Weber that opens the second-movement “Rondino” had all the necessary energy, but no excess harshness.
The Ives quartet is also an early work. But Ives is Copland’s opposite in progression: starting consonant as a youth and growing thornier with age. The quartet’s melodic material is derived from Protestant hymns—spiced with asymmetrical rhythms and unexpected modulations, but still entirely euphonious, devoid of Ives’s trademark ear-splitting clashes.
The Kontras Quartet’s flowing phrasing kept the first movement from sounding like a mere counterpoint exercise (which was, in fact, its origin). They played the second movement with little dabs of rubato that brought out the harmonic and rhythmic surprises. Bartsch’s solo when the music turns to triple meter in the finale was a model of sweetness and delicacy.
The group’s style yielded more mixed results in two other works on the program.
One was the first string quartet of Andrew Imbrie, perhaps better known today for his 42 years of teaching at UC Berkeley than for his compositions. (Indeed, Bartsch mentioned that she studied with two of his pupils.) Although his 1942 quartet is nominally tonal in places, its dissonance and aching melodies recall Schoenberg’s pre-serialist, free-atonal period.
Kontras lent a vocal quality to even some of the most instrumental-seeming moments, such as the twisty figures in the duet between Bartsch and new second violinist Sherri Zhang in the development of the first movement. Places where the writing is more explicitly melodic, such as throughout the somber second movement, favored their eloquent approach even more. The finale was the only movement where one missed more assertive playing. The barbed, asymmetric 5/4 rhythms in the main theme needed more snap.
The least successful interpretation of the evening was Terry Riley’s G Song. The piece is structured much like a Baroque passacaglia, with new melodies introduced and varied throughout the piece, over recurring figures.
Bartsch and Zhang infused the violin ostinati with much more dynamic nuance than they usually receive. But they didn’t sufficiently lessen their dynamics to let the viola and cello cut through, when either of the latter two introduced fresh themes. Riley’s most imaginative lines were buried under the accompaniment. The violist Weber, in particular, was shortchanged during his first entrance, which should have established the piece’s first hint of lyricism, but was barely audible.
Kontras shed their lyrical sound in the other piece on the program: Four Marys by Bang on a Can co-founder Julia Wolfe. In her spoken remarks before the piece began, Hatmaker referred to it as an “experiment in scale” (meaning size and perspective, not major and minor), a “bath of soundwaves,” and a “landscape.”
All of these are apt descriptions of Wolfe’s piece, which evokes the Scottish folk tradition that supplies its title not through actual folk tunes, but through drones, slides, and plucks that are meant to represent a dulcimer.
The quartet’s knotty approach to texture, which had been a liability in the Riley, was an asset in the Wolfe. They declined to simplify this complex music.
Although there were moments when one instrument broke free of the other three and stepped into the foreground before receding again, most of the time one was keenly aware of all of the different layers in Wolfe’s piece. This left the listener free to (using Hatmaker’s metaphors) immerse oneself in the piece’s waters or roam its landscape—catching what details one could, absorbing what one chose. It was the perfect approach to this kind of music.
The Kontras Quartet will repeat the Ives and Riley works, alongside music by Daniel Bernard Roumain and Komitas Vartapet at the Rush Hour Concerts 5:45 p.m. June 10 at St. James Cathedral. kontrasquartet.com; americanmusicproject.net
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