Isidore Quartet delivers the musical heat at Winter Chamber Fest
A wind-chill temperature of -15 at concert time did little to deter a sizable contingent of the Winter Chamber Music Festival audience from turning out for the Isidore String Quartet Friday night in Evanston.
Since winning the 2022 Banff International String Quartet Competition, the young ensemble has been on a career fast track. The Isidore Quartet made an acclaimed debut at Northwestern’s festival in 2023 and subsequent local appearances have only served to bolster their burgeoning reputation.
The group’s refined, lightish sonority is well suited to Classical-era repertoire, and the Isidores led off Friday with music of Haydn, the String Quartet in B-flat major, Op, 76, no. 4.
As with their predecessors in the now-retired Emerson Quartet, the Isidore violinists take turns in the first chair. Phoenix Avalon’s elegant tone was well suited to the ascending violin line that opens the first movement and gives the quartet its “Sunrise” moniker. With a fluent easing into the main Allegro, the musicians’ gracious playing balanced the spirited and lyrical elements while bringing an individual touch to their solo passages.
The players’ spacious unfolding of the Adagio set the scene for the slow movement’s searching rumination, nicely contrasted with the playful rusticity of the ensuing Menuetto and its drone-led trio. Perhaps the final movement could have smiled a bit more—admittedly, it’s not one of Haydn’s most knee-slapping closers—but the playing was still polished and effervescent with a bracing burst of velocity in the closing section.
It’s good to see a young ensemble like the Isidore tackling György Ligeti’s String Quartet No. 2. One of the few 20th century masterworks in the genre not written by Bartok or Shostakovich, Ligeti’s 1968 work is cast in his patented style of “micropolyphony,” characterized by acute concentration, atom-blasted textures and explosive dynamic contrasts.
At times one wanted a more unhinged intensity to the playing, which at times felt too controlled for the music. (Shorter pauses between the five movements would have helped as well.)
Still, with Adrian Steele taking the first violin chair, the Isidore members showed themselves up to the myriad challenges of Ligeti’s demanding score. They encompassed the wildly divergent qualities of its movements: the jumpy tension and sudden dynamic bursts of the first movement, the uneasy calm and sustained notes of the second, and the relentless, asymmetric mechanization of the pizzicato third. The musicians brought worthy fire to the brief yet brutal fourth movement, yet were at their best in the conclusion. Playing aptly “con delicatezza” as marked, the Isidores explored a rarefied array of hushed, barely audible dynamics in the last section, which provided genuine resolution and registered effectively, assisted by the quiet and attentive audience.
The concert concluded with Brahms’ String Quartet No. 3 in B flat, the composer’s final work in the genre.
The musicians showed themselves in synch with Brahms’ style, even if one sometimes wanted more body and greater sonorous heft for this repertoire. They brought a forthright quality to the opening movement and an outdoor quality to the folkish second theme, with apt mystery in the development section. Led by the slender-sweet violin tone of Avalon (back in the first chair), the musicians conveyed the interior musing of the Andante with sensitive expression.
Perhaps the third movement could have used a little more edge to paint the requisite “agitato,” but the finale was ideal. This set of eight variations can be difficult to pull off, but each musician made the most of their spotlit moments with violist Devin Moore’s oakey viola tone and sensitive playing a particular pleasure.
No encore on this occasion, but the Isidore Quartet further burnished their growing reputation as one of the finest young chamber groups on today’s music scene.
The Winter Chamber Music Festival concludes February 14 with the Dover Quartet performing music of Schubert, Mendelssohn and Grażyna Bacewicz 7:30 p.m. at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall. music.northwestern.edu
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