The Ives Have It – San Francico Classical Voice October 24, 2008
By Beeri Moalem
Any ensemble that calls itself the Ives Quartet had better not play like sissies, as Charles Ives himself would threaten. “I don’t write music for sissy ears,” he used to quip. When an audience member once booed a dissonant piece, he stood up and shouted back, “Stop being such a God-damned sissy! Why can’t you stand up before fine strong music like this and use your ears like a man?” Last Friday at St. Mark’s Church in Palo Alto, the ladies and gentleman of the Ives Quartet more than lived up to their name, playing Ives’ own Second Quartet with all the required force and grit, not minding the dissonances and extreme difficulties, and embracing the quirkiness that, a hundred years after its creation, still leaves listeners in awe.
The performance conveyed so much more than standard musical fare — rather, it felt like a full-scale theatrical production, or perhaps a long spiritual journey. In the work, Ives quotes popular melodies among his dense clashing lines, but once the tongue-in-cheek awkward humor passes, an ironic power cuts through with these incongruent insertions. The music has a built-in miniature “skit” in which the second violinist pretends to get lost as the music grows too difficult, and finds her way back only when the music switches to a regular meter — this can be silly, and fun.
On a higher level, though, when performed with utter conviction, the piece conveys its true meaning: It is Ives’ criticism of musicians who snub dissonant, rulebreaking music — a criticism that still rings oh-so-true in today’s classical music world, where Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms are played again and again … and again.
I love those composers’ masterpieces as much as anyone else does, but I would much rather go to a concert and be challenged with three new works that I have not heard some 20 times. In its Palo Alto recital the Ives Quartet (the ensemble) lived up to its name in yet another way: by advocating and playing new music. In the remainder of its 10th anniversary season (it runs through next May), it will feature premieres by local composers, and will focus on unknown American composers such as Quincy Porter.
Music Conveying Many Moods
On this particular evening the Quartet presented a concert featuring three American works from the early 20th century, all composed within about two decades, yet all showing drastically different styles: the still-modern-feeling dissonances and complexities of Charles Ives, the charming jazziness of George Gershwin, and the passionate late-Romantic melodiousness of Amy Beach. In its playing, which was both natural and enthusiastic, the quartet displayed mastery of each of these contrasting musical worlds.
Each member of the quartet has a drastically different playing style, but somehow they coalesce into a rich ensemble. Jodi Levitz plays with an incomparably smooth, open sound that is rarely heard from violas. Susan Freier’s playing challenges with a force seldom heard from the second violin chair. Cellist Stephen Harrison grounds the group with a thoughtful, careful approach. And first violinist Bettina Mussumeli plays with a colorful, passionate sound, and knows how to blend and how to soar, how to speak and how to sing. At the conclusion of the third movement of Ives’ quartet, Mussumeli’s stratospheric melody, played in the highest possible register, cut through despite being so delicate — a truly transcendental sound.
All these sonic personalities ensure that there will always be something interesting for the ear to focus on. Yet when asked to play unison lines, as was frequently the case in the Amy Beach Piano Quintet in F-sharp Minor, the ensemble sounded like a single powerful string instrument, in terms of intonation, color, and direction. A listener could hardly ask for more from a string quartet.
In the Beach quintet, pianist William Wellborn joined the ensemble and displayed masterful pianism, sustaining the composer’s long, lyrical lines and balancing considerations of chamber music style with dashing solo runs.
Gershwin’s gentle Lullaby, with its exposed harmonics and flowing melody, coming as it did right after Charles Ives’ antithetical quartet, is exactly what Ives would have referred to as “sissy music.” Yet this string quartet showed that it has the versatility to play as schmaltzy sissies, as well as virile machos.