By Janet Silver Ghent
Sitting by his Palo Alto fireplace, cellist Stephen Harrison opens the soulful Adagio of Frank Bridge’s Quartet No. 1 in E minor, the “Bologna.” Suddenly the music grows stormy, as violinists Bettina Mussumeli and Susan Freier and violist Jodi Levitz enter. Then comes a climactic crescendo led by the first violin, with each instrument taking up the theme. Getting into the act, a gray cat named Jasmine springs into the picture.
As the Ives Quartet gets ready for its “Viva Italia!” concerts on Friday, Sept. 28, in Palo Alto and Sunday, Sept. 30, in San Jose, the focus is not so much on individual notes — although the technical prowess of these four instrumentalists is inspiring. Instead the four are working out the rhythms, creating special effects, strumming the emotions, responding to one another as well as the music.
The effect is “like water over the rocks,” Harrison says during a break in rehearsal, describing the Bridge piece.
Don’t expect to find the four in tuxedos playing Pachelbel’s Canon in D amid potted palms while preoccupied partygoers sip Chardonnay.
They don’t do background music. More to the point, this is a group committed to shattering the elitist reputation of chamber music by making it accessible. They present pre-concert talks, do residencies at colleges and go into public schools, playing before disadvantaged youth who have never heard classical music.
“They’ve never seen a string quartet. They don’t know a violin from a viola,” Freier says. But the reactions surprise the musicians. Often the children are intrigued by the most abstract, difficult pieces that seldom make it into concert halls.
The group, which takes its name from American composer Charles Ives, “feels strongly about playing the underplayed, underappreciated repertoire of the 20th century,” Levitz says.
Ives, an early modernist, was a Connecticut Yankee and insurance entrepreneur who filled his music with quotations from folk and popular songs.
“For us, being an American quartet, it made sense not to name us after an Italian violin,” Harrison says. Plus he liked the I.Q. acronym.
The repertoire includes not only Ives, but early 20th-century British composer Bridge, and Quincy Porter (1897-1966), a descendant of New England firebrand preacher Jonathan Edwards, who imbued his music with a different kind of fire. The first four Porter string quartets are featured on the group’s new CD on the Naxos label. The music can be wistful, lyrical or percussive, sometimes with doleful allegro movements and abrupt endings.
Levitz, who has become a Porter scholar, went to a library at Yale and literally uncovered 56 boxes of Porter documents and music that hadn’t been looked at in 20 years. The librarians “put his life in front of me,” says Levitz, who spent two years going through the papers.
The group is quick to recognize that there are pitfalls in playing the pieces of the early moderns as if they were written today. These composers often wrote for instrumentalists who added their own interpretations. “It was a very different way of playing,” Levitz says.
“Much more liberty was taken,” Mussumeli adds.
“The notes are our script,” Harrison explains. “If you go to hear a play, you will hear the script played differently each time. You can go to a concert and see how we interact, how we respond to the music.”
A CD, by contrast “is the performance (a group) never gave,” because it’s amplified and edited in the studio, Harrison says.
“We are not robots,” Levitz chimes in. “We take risks in performance. The major goal is not just to be perfect but to touch the souls of our audience, to create an emotional response … to open their ears and their hearts, and they’ll hear the script differently.”
Opening ears and hearts is the goal of the Ives Quartet. It isn’t always easy. During the first day of a workshop at Trinity College in Connecticut, where they do an annual residence, students may come in with caps pulled over the head, practically snoring. Then comes the concert, followed by a discussion the following day. By that time, the students are awake and excited. “One by one, I feel I’m making a difference,” Freier says.
Theirs is not music to snore by, particularly since they play less-familiar works and play them with passion. It’s not that the group ignores Beethoven, Schubert or Haydn, but concerts also feature works by lesser-known modern composers.
For instance, the “Viva Italia!” concert includes Gian Francesco Malipiero’s Quartet No. 1, “Rispetti e Strambotti”; and the Quartet in E minor by Giuseppe Verdi, better known for his operas. It also includes the Bridge piece.
The Ives Quartet, launched in 1998, morphed out of a resident string quartet at Stanford University, where both Harrison and Freier were teaching. The two, who are married and have roots in the Bay Area, were among the original musicians.
Freier, the second violinist, grew up in Palo Alto, where she played with the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra while in high school and holds Stanford degrees in music and biology. Although her original plan was medical school, she pursued an advanced degree at Eastman School of Music in New York. Since then, she has taught at Indiana University and Stanford, and continues to teach in workshops and conferences as well as privately.
She’s played second violin since her days at Eastman. “It’s something I’ve grown into. I don’t love second violin jokes, but I love the music,” she says.
Although she and Harrison first met in 1977 at a chamber music school in Taos, they went in separate directions, re-encountering in 1989, when Freier joined the Stanford faculty. Harrison, a San Francisco native and a graduate of Oberlin and Boston University, has been on the faculty since 1983. But his original goal while growing up was to be the lead guitarist in a rock group. That led to the study of string bass, and eventually, the cello. In his spare time, he still listens to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Paul Simon.
But there isn’t much spare time with three children. Sarah, 22, is a recent graduate of U.C. Davis and is studying for the LSAT exam. Rachel, 19, is a sophomore at U.C. Berkeley, where she is an art and pre-med major. Zachary, 13, is a student at Jordan Middle School in Palo Alto and is already performing in local chorales, opera and musical theater groups. In addition, he’s about to celebrate his bar mitzvah at Congregation Etz Chayim. The two daughters are both violists, although not professionally.
Coincidentally, the other quartet members, who are newcomers to the group, are also partners in private life. Mussumeli and Levitz, who each have two Juilliard degrees, are professors at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In 2005, when the quartet needed a new first violinist, they heard one of Mussumeli’s recordings and invited her to join.
When the quartet needed a new violist, Levitz was an obvious choice. She was formerly principal violist with the Italian chamber group I Solisti Veneti; Mussumeli was co-concertmaster.
The two women first met in Juilliard’s pre-college division when Mussumeli was 15 and Levitz 12. Both went on to complete bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Juilliard.
Then came Italy — a sojourn that was supposed to last six months. It lasted 18 years. They now divide their time between San Francisco and Italy, where they spend holidays.
“Neither of us planned to return to America,” said Levitz, whose passions for cooking and home improvement flourished in Italy, where they gave cooking classes to visiting Americans. “But (the conservatory) made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
Freier and Harrison, along with their children, stayed at the Mussumeli-Levitz home in Italy this past summer while teaching and performing. The “Viva Italia!” program grew out of the summer experience.
These days, weekly rehearsals alternate between Palo Alto and San Francisco, where the quartet will offer the “Viva Italia!” program in October and November.
Beyond rehearsals and concerts, each member performs nonmusical roles. Mussumeli is PR liaison. Freier handles educational outreach and sets concert dates. Levitz works with the board on long-term planning strategies. Harrison takes care of applying for grants.
“You need to do more than play your instrument,” Harrison says.
“Which was very surprising for us, coming from Italy, where the arts are subsidized,” Mussumeli adds.
What is it like to be in quartet with one’s partner?
On the one hand, each couple is used to playing and traveling with one another. But there’s some negotiation involved.
“Bettina and I made a deal that we would treat each other like strangers,” with the same courtesy one would offer to another professional, Levitz says. “It’s not like tennis partners.”
Says Harrison: “Susan always reminds me if I’m not talking to her as I would be with a stranger.”
Adds Mussumeli, “In any ensemble, things can be intense.”
What: The Ives Quartet presents “Viva Italia!”
Where: St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 600 Colorado Ave., Palo Alto
When: 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 28., with a 7 p.m. pre-concert talk
Cost: $25 general, $20 seniors, $15 students, free for children ages 12 and under
Info: Go to www.ivescollective.org or call 650-224-7849. Later “Viva Italia!” concerts are planned for Sept. 30 in San Jose and Oct. 7, Nov. 8 and Nov. 15 in San Francisco.
