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A brilliant performance of diverse music by Ives Quartet – Register (Napa, CA) Thursday, May 16, 2002

By L. PIERCE CARSON
Register Staff Writer

The Bay Area-based Ives Quartet comprises four chamber music lovers who enjoy what they do and convey their delight to fortunate audiences.

Last Monday night, violinists Robin Sharp and Susan Freier, violist Scott Woolweaver and cellist Stephen Harrison turned on the musical charm at Copia, delighting a small but spellbound audience with an imaginative program that included Haydn, Britten and a seductive salute to jazz.

Formerly in residence as the Stanford String Quartet since 1983, this ensemble departed Stanford University in the fall of 1998 to seek greater artistic independence. The re-named Ives Quartet performs a home season concert series in the Bay Area and also tours throughout the United States.

For their wine country debut, members of the Ives Quartet chose to begin the performance with one of the best of Haydn’s mid-period quartets, “No. 32 in C Major (Op. 20, No. 2).”

The rich textured opening of the work proved immediately inviting, especially in this intimate space — a 270-seat auditorium with lively acoustics, yet not overly so. This is an ideal venue for acoustic instruments, hence perfect for chamber music ensembles.

A unique Haydn capriccio blended baroque and classical styles in the same movement, done most sensitively by the performers. The light, insightful articulation in the fugal finale proved a real joy.

The ensemble playing allowed for enjoyment in Haydn’s inspiration. The Ives Quartet is fully worthy of the composer’s inexhaustible invention.

Thomas Oboe Lee is a jazz flutist and music teacher at Boston College. If Lee’s 10-year-old work, “Seven Jazz Studies,” is the yardstick by which we measure his talents, then he’s a first-rate composer as well.

“Seven Jazz Studies” incorporates tributes to four remarkable musicians — a pair of jazz pianists, Horace Silver and Bill Evans, composer/performer Antonio Carlos Jobim and one of the world’s greatest bassists, Jaco Pastorius, whose manic depression led to his death at 35 in 1987.

The work begins with a prelude reminiscent of a tuning exercise and slips easily into a sound that is uniquely Silver, the hardbop grandpop, whose “Doodlin'” and “Sister Sadie” come to mind. An melancholic interlude precedes a witty waltz in the Evans vein, and the salute to Jobim — a cello pizzicato providing the rhythm while remaining strings trot out a beautiful melody that Jobim would have loved. The assertive punk funk groove that was Pastorius is represented before the ensemble chimes in with a foreboding postlude that, perhaps, speaks to a musical style yet to come. The musicians’ insights brought an ideal combination of authority and warmth to this creative piece.

The musical voice of Benjamin Britten is a highly original one. One never feels his music is derivative. This voice is that of a sophisticated man of culture — his texts derive from Henry James, Herman Melville, Wilfred Owen, even medieval poetry. His music is imaginative, melodic and charged with taut emotion. He is probably the greatest English composer since Henry Purcell.

Britten’s valedictory “Quartet No. 3 (Op. 94),” with its rarefied atmosphere and ethereal slow movement, is simply brilliant — a classic work in the repertoire. With a nod to his friend Shostakovich, the Burlesque is splendidly robust. And the long final Passacaglia — which incorporates themes from his opera, “Death in Venice,” and concludes with a musical question — was sustained by the ensemble with deep concentration and reverence. This strongly characterized reading was both warm and polished, and certainly deeply expressive.

The Ives Quartet is a most impressive ensemble. I, for one, hope to hear more of them.

In light of the sold-out performances of Chamber Music in Napa Valley, I can’t believe so few chamber music fans turned out for the Ives Quartet at Copia. Do this audience disappear when fair weather sets in? Despite the low turnout, Copia officials will continue to offer chamber music events, hoping to build an audience for these programs. And, yes, the Ives ensemble will return, thank goodness.

Radiant Quartet – The East Hampton Star (NY) April 13, 2000

By David Strickland

On Friday evening at the Ross School in East Hampton, music lovers of all stripes were offered a delightful selection of forward — and backward — looking string quartets, admirably performed by the Ives quartet.

The concert was another in a continuing series of lectures, concerts, master classes, and the like being offered to the community by the school, which make a fine contribution to our late-winter intellectual and musical life.

The Ives Quartet, which for 14 years was the ensemble in residence at Stanford University, has named itself well. I cannot imagine a better emissary for bringing the (still undervalued) works of Charles Ives to light. Attractive, intelligent, and energetic, the quartet is up to the challenge of making the works of this presumably inaccessible American genius accessible to the average concertgoer.

Forward or Back

The performance opened with short talk by the cellist, Stephen Harrison, who explained that the works chosen could be characterized as either a forward-looking work of mature artist (Beethoven) or as backwards-looking works of young composers (Mendelssohn and Ives).

Indeed, in the quartets performances of the Beethoven F minor Quartet, Op. 95, which opened the program, it pointed toward the complex and profound late quartets, especially, to my ears, the Op. 131 Quartet in C sharp minor.

Aside from some infelicities of intonation in the first movement and a lack of energy in the second, the performance was otherwise magical.

Ives Works

The two Ives works on the program, a youthful “Chorale” that looks back to Brahms and the “Intermezzo” from the cantata “The Celestial Country, ” were impeccably executed. Mr. Harrison’s cello was especially moving in the moody opening of the “Chorale,” while the dynamic interaction of Roy Malan, first violin, and Susan Freier, second violin, in the “Intermezzo” brought out the coiled tension and turbulent emotion that infuses the middle section of what otherwise might appear to be a derivative late-Romantic exercise.

However, in the Mendelssohn E flat major Quartet (Op. 12), which completed the evening, all of the formidable forces of the ensemble were perfectly aligned to give us an incomparably magnificent performance.

Edge of Great

In their hands, the first movement allegro non troppo was sweet and innocently well-rounded, while the funny little gypsy-like melody of the canzonetta was exuberant and simultaneously compact.

In the finale, molto allegro e vivace, underscored by the intensity of Scottt Woolweaver’s fine viola playing, the quartet realized perfectly a dramatic exposition of the explosive power of the young Mendelssohn’s love of life and repressed sexual energy.

And in the coda, playfully reminding us of Beethoven’s tricks and surprises, I heard the radiant playing of a quartet confident and relaxed, on the edge of becoming one of the greats of the next generation.

Ives Quartet Full Court Impress

The Ives Quartet is a locally based ensemble that offers gems of concerts. Its programming customarily includes one contemporary or unusual modern work along with older, better-known material. I was drawn like a bee to honey to Sunday’s concert at Le Petit Trianon in San José — it repeats at St. Mark’s Church in Palo Alto on Friday, the 12th — by the rare presence of the United Quartet(No. 4) by Henry Cowell. Read more…

With ‘Osmosis’ Ives Quartet flouts convention

Dubbed “Osmosis,” the 14th season of the Ives Quartet opened last week. This group occasionally flouts convention, which makes them a treasure for music fans in the south bay. For example, at Friday’s concert, cellist Stephen Harrison spoke to the audience between every piece, providing context for what would follow. Read more…

The Ives Quartet strikes again: Death and the Maiden

The Ives Quartet is a locally based ensemble that offers gems of concerts. Its programming customarily includes one contemporary or unusual modern work along with older, better-known material. I was drawn like a bee to honey to Sunday’s concert at Le Petit Trianon in San José — it repeats at St. Mark’s Church in Palo Alto on Friday, the 12th — by the rare presence of the United Quartet (No. 4) by Henry Cowell. Read more