Ives Quartet: Death and the Maiden – Stark Insider March 8, 2012

Ives Quartet: Death and the Maiden

The Ives Quartet strikes again:
Death and the Maiden

By Cy Ashley Webb

The better part of the Ives Quartet salon was given over to the Quartet in D Minor, which Schubert (who died of tertiary syphilis at the young age of 31) wrote in anticipation of his demise.

The year has flown by, as this Sunday brought the last of the Ives Quartet’s astonishing salons. These events are unique, bringing together the IQ, their devoted audience, and various guests. Not only does the audience get to hear the IQ up close and personal, but they also share the group’s insights into individual works. Nowhere on the Peninsula, San Francisco, or the East Bay does this kind of intelligent discussion about classical music happen regularly.

Insofar as it included vocal music, Sunday’s Salon differed from the several that preceded it this year. In addition to violist and musicologist Derek Katz, who graced their “Czech, Please” and “Haydn and Mozart” events earlier this year, this salon included mezzo-soprano Wendy Hillhouse, who sang Death and the Maiden (Der Tod und das Mädchen). Steven Lightburn’s piano accompaniment and Hillhouse’s full-throated voice did more than justice to this short work, which Schubert wrote seven years before he composed the Quartet in D Minor, the second movement of which is known by the same name. Hillhouse took the time to explain the two halves of this song, which represent a dialog with death. One of the joys of these salons is their relative flexibility. Ms. Hillhouse responded to an audience request to sing this a second time, allowing the audience to appreciate the finer nuances of her delivery.

The better part of the salon was given over to the Quartet in D Minor, which Schubert (who died of tertiary syphilis at the young age of 31) wrote in anticipation of his demise. As always at these events, the Ives Quartet aims for a great understanding of the work, so Katz spoke at length about the structure of the second movement (Andante con moto), which was a variations upon a theme. This second movement begins with measured dirge-like tones, that recall the piano accompaniment of the liede, before beginning a series of stand-alone variations that remain loosely connected by the heartbeat tone that they revert to.

Following this second movement, the group returned to the first movement before closing with a small section of the presto. This first movement commences with a violent attack that held the audience in its grasp, making them ripe for the balance of this movement.

The intensity of this piece would be diluted in a larger forum. The private home that serves as a venue for these salons allows the music to be appreciated as it was written – for a small intimate audience. As much as I love the Herbst and Davies Symphony Hall, they don’t hold a candle to these salons.

Hopefully, the Ives Quartet will add more additional salons to their next season. These sell-out events show the need for this type of event.

Ives Quartet Iluminates – Stark Insider February 12, 2012

This reference begins a musical joke throughout the entire piece starting with 3 notes repeated fives times by five different notes in the first 13 measures alone, not including another six repetitions by the second violin, cello, and viola.

By Cy Ashley Webb

The Ives Quartet presents a program in which the group has deep roots. Haydn’s Quartet in F Sharp Minor is part of opus 50 – which the IQ has presenting sequentially in concert. Quincy Porter’s String Quartet #6 is a continuation of the Porter Quartets that they recorded on Naxos, one of which was performed in their recent concert with Gwendolyn Mok. This systematic approach to programming is an enormous benefit to their devoted fan base, all of whom have been learning more about these the works of these composers as the IQ plumbs this material.

Friday’s concert opened with the Haydn quartet. As always, the IQ had done their advance work, researching the multiple scores that Haydn published. Violist Jodi Levitz explained that the group had identified a score that was headed with the words “in nomine domini,” in the name of the Lord. This reference begins a musical joke throughout the entire piece starting with 3 notes repeated fives times by five different notes in the first 13 measures alone, not including another six repetitions by the second violin, cello, and viola. This gets picked up again by the violin in a slightly different form toward the end of the last movement, tying this together. The joke doesn’t end here, however as notions of trinity are embedded in the work, beginning with the three sharps, the three-note gestures in the third movement, as so on.

Despite this insistent return to a three-note motif, this quartet doesn’t give itself up too easily. The Ives Quartet maximizes the depth of this piece playing it relatively slowly, allowing the listener to get lost in the luscious warmth of Mussumeli’s violin.

Written 150 years after the Haydn, the Quincy Porter quartet is startlingly different. This difference lies not just in the 150 year style difference, but in the nature of the material itself. The cello part of the F# minor quartet was relatively simple, allowing generous room for Haydn’s amateur cellist patron. The Porter quartet ore than compensated for this, as it opened with Harrison’s ostinato-like gesture, powering through with a sweeping crescendo, providing an anchor for this inherently stable first movement. The dominance of the cello returns again in the third movement, joined by Levitz on viola and Freier on violin in a pulsating accompaniment. These two movements flank the dreamy second movement that creeps along in a nebulous fog. Just when the fog begins to get tedious, the music becomes insistently faster and loud, before retreating into the ethereal fog.

The evening ended with guest violist Leslie Tomkins, and cellist Tanya Tomkins, who joined the group for the Tchaikovsky sextet. With its more predictable structure, this was a huge contrast to the quartet that preceded it. One could not help be struck however, by the difference of six instruments and four. Goethe’s observation that a string quartet is a conversation among four equals, does not extend to this particular work, which sounded more, at moments like a chamber orchestra. This was a rousing work that ended the evening with a vibrant, high energy finale.

Ives Quartet Salon: Mozart, Haydn and the 1780s – Stark Insider November 23, 2011

By Cy Ashley Webb

Ives Quartet (IQ) salons offer a heady mix of intelligent conversation about music, interspersed with more music. There’s nothing quite like these events anywhere in the Bay Area. They’re targeted at the same crowd who so enthusiastically responded to Anthony Tomassini’s “Top Ten” in the New York Times some months back: the educated, enthusiastic listener who hungers to learn more. Thanks to the IQ, we all listen smarter.

As the title indicated, this salon was devoted to discussing Mozart, Haydn and the 1780s. The 1780’s were a fecund period for string quartets, giving rise to much of the standard repertoire for the same. The two years between 1785 and 1787 were particularly remarkable because they brought forth Haydn’s Opus 50 (also known as the Prussian Quartets,) and Mozart’s String Quartet in D Major, K. 499 (known as the Hoffmeister). Just as he did for the IQ salon back in September, musicologist Derek Katz from UC Santa Barbara joined the group to elaborate upon the nature of the string quartet, with particular attention to Haydn’s B flat major quartet and Mozart’s Hoffmeister.

Katz noted these works were composed in Vienna and remarked that just as Vienna was strange, the nature of string quartets was strange. Elaborating further, he explained that unlike London and Paris, where music was beginning to leave the manor and enter the performance hall, Vienna was hardly the hub of the musical world. It might be the center of the empire, but Vienna had limited access to music publishing world. In Vienna, composers such as Haydn were servants for landed families, composing for particular functions. It was only later that musicians made the transition from court servants to entrepreneurs. Quartets thrived in this environment. Those written in London and Paris, tended to give themselves up too easily. Typical of these are works by Ignaz Joseph Pleyel, who was writing in London. However, in the rarified Viennese air, there was little division between musician and audience. Here, the quartet developed as a conversation – played in rooms not unlike the IQ salon, albeit for even smaller audiences.

Turning to the first movement of the Haydn, the IQ performed with their usual consummate flair. With impeccable articulation, each of the three figures made their rounds from one instrument to another, each interwoven with the other. Perfectly balanced and paced, the IQ’s performance embodied Goethe’s definition of a string quartet being a “conversation between four rationale people.” For this point in time, there was no better place in the universe than ten feet away from Susan Freier, Stephen Harrison, Bettina Mussumeli, and Jodi Levitz. These salons offer the listener an ear up, as it were, on performances that might otherwise sound excellent, but take on a transcendental quality in such close range.

Deconstructing the Mozart String Quartet in D Major, Katz explained how the minuet and trio of this work “is just too wacko,” defeating traditional expectations. I wish Katz could have elaborated here, requiring the musicians to play particular irregular elements, as he did with the Haydn, because I only followed about a fifth of his explanation. However, this was a minor distraction.

The only real disappointment is that we have to wait until March for the next Salon, which will be about Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden.”

Autumnal evening with the Ives Quartet – Stark Insider October 2, 2011

By Cy Ashley Webb

With leaves scudding across the parking lot, crickets chirping and a quarter moon low in the sky, autumn hung in the air on Friday, making one pause to take it in. This was a perfect evening to spend with the Ives Quartet, who performed at St. Marks’s Episcopal in Palo Alto. Even the churchy smell of the heavy wooden beams in the nave and chancel  combined with stale incense was perfect.

This was a particularly delicious program. Often I look at programming and wonder where particular choices came from. With the Ives Quartet, you can almost watch their programming build organically through the year. This  concert was no exception. Their first offering, Haydn’s Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 50, No. 3, built naturally on their September, 2010 and April, 2011 performances, which included  Op. 50 No. 1 and 2, respectively. The second offering, Erwin Schulhoff’s Quartet No. 1, was a completion of a performance begun at their September Salon. The third piece, Brahms Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34 brought back a former guest, Gwendolyn Mok, and her 1868 Erard piano. These three pieces complemented each other, combining something light and decorative, with something of profound emotional intensity and something intellectually challenging.

Hearing the Schulhoff a second time in almost as many weeks was a rare treat.  I wrote at length about this piece last month, but never heard it live from beginning to end in a single performance. This breathtaking piece opens with an intense presto, punctuated by drone-like cello passages. The second movement highlights the enormous talents of violist Jodi Levitz.  I still haven’t figured out how the Ives Quartet produced the breathy tones that sounded all the world like a radio signal fading in and out – sounds that recur in the fourth movement. This piece of great violence and agitation plays like the audio sound track to Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism. The Aviv Quartet and Brandis Quartet versions of this piece – good as they are – don’t hold a candle to the Ives’ version, especially the fourth movement, with it’s eerily oscillating tones played by Susan Freier.

The star of the show was Gwendolyn Mok’s Erard piano. These words are not an incidental choice, as audience members clustered around the instrument after the show, some even having their picture taken with it.  Mok stoked everyone’s interest when she explained the Erard was single strung, instead of cross strung.  This difference eliminated some of the overtones that produce a more homogenous sound. Mok drove her point home, contrasting the Erard with a Yamaha grand that shared the stage. Homogenous tone aside, where the Yamaha had a bright tone, the Erard seemed both warmer and clearer.

Mok joined the Ives Quartet for the Brahms Quintet. The enormous contrast in timbre, volume and intensity that the Ives brought to this piece would sound altogether schizophrenic if performed by a lesser group. However, with the Ives Quartet, one marvels at the exquisite integration of piano with quartet, as the sound of one instrument melds into another, one musical gesture is completed by another, sounding at once consonant with each other, and then again, strikingly different. Nowhere is this more evident that the Scherzo, with its intense violence as piano and quartet work at cross-purposes with each other – and then pull together. The frantic, almost march-like scherzo relaxes into a trio – before returning to its original intensity. After this third movement, I was amazed that band members had the energy to continue.

The Ives Quartet will be repeating this program against on Sunday, October 9 at Le Petit Trianon in San Jose.

Ives Quartet offers Dvorák and Schulhoff – Stark Insider September 19, 2011

By Cy Ashley Webb

Being a music critic means contextualizing the music. This might come as a surprise for those who think it’s all about evaluation. While there’s obviously an element of opinion, that’s not the heart of the matter. In an ideal world, the critic leaves the reader a little bit smarter and more informed, by providing intelligent remarks about a performance that the reader might never see.

All of this is a long windup for the Ives Quartet Salon that took place this Sunday. These salons are all about context. By providing intelligent conversation about classical music for the reasonably educated layman, the Ives Quartet does something that no one else on the peninsula does. Scott Fogelsong’s pre-concert lectures come close, but they’re not quite the same thing. Interweaving performance and conversation, the Ives Quartet does a big favor for all of us, in scheduling these events.

I’d been listening to various versions of Dvorák’s “American” (String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, Op. 96) and Edwin Schulhoff’s Quartets No. 1 and 2 for the better part of August and September in anticipation of this salon, so I thought I was reasonably prepared.  However, none of the works I’d been listening to prepared me for the breathtaking experience of sitting ten feet from violinist experience Bettina Mussumeli and hearing this stuff performed by the virtuoso Ives Quartet.  Hopefully, they’ll get around to recording these two pieces together. This sampling would have been enough, but Ives Quartet salon also included violist and musicologist Derek Katz. Teaching at UC Santa Barbara, Katz’ specialties include Czech music, nationalism and modernism, all of which speak directly to the program at hand.

The program highlighted the difference between the Czech Dvorák and German-Jew Schulhoff (also born in Czechoslovakia). Although separated by a mere 30 years, the yawning chasm of World War I places them eons apart. Much of this salon focused on how the classical aesthetic changed during this time, using Dvorák’s “American” and Schulhoff’s Quartet No. 1 as exemplars.

The Salon opened with the first moment of the “American,” Simultaneously fluid and supple, animated and pulsating, it was an entirely different experience than the Dvorák I’d been listening to. While reams have been written about the “American” influence on this work (for starters, see “Dvorák on the American Scene” by John Clapham in 19th-Century Music, (1981), Dvorák’s understanding of native American music was minimal, at best, and probably confounded with African-American spirituals. Immediately following the Dvorák, was the agitated first moment of Schulhoff’s first quartet. The difference, of course, is marked by World War I. Insofar as a nationalistic impulse informed the beauty of Dvorák, such an aesthetic died during the war years, clearing the way for the modernist tonality of Schulhoff. While the Dvorák was exquisitely beautiful, Schulhoff was writing from an entirely different place. His service in the war proved searing, as he came out of the experience firmly convinced that the war was, as Katz said, “a moral and political catastrophe,” that caused him to become briefly aligned with the dada movement. His focus  – which is hauntingly evident in his post-Dada work was how to write music that’s historically meaningful. This different aesthetic of modernity stands apart from the path taken Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, and Bartok, all of whom navigated similar waters.

The Ives Quartet and Katz continued through the second and third movements of the respective pieces, pausing to reflect on the similarities and differences between them. Dvorak’s take on ethnic music, was, as Stephen Harrison noted, a variation of Brahms with a sprinkling of “ethnic” tossed on top.

The most animated conversation was devoted to Schulhoff’s 4th movement, which stretches the technical abilities of players and instruments alike. Insofar as the catastrophe of World War I laid the ground work for the greater catastrophe of World War II, Schuloff’s aching viola train whistle and broken mechanistic end to this 1923 movement seems to foretell the disaster that would follow. His death in the Bavarian concentration camp of Wulzburg seems writ large over this piece.  Unlike Schoenberg and Bartok, both of whom ended up in the U.S. after the war, Schulhoff turned east, applying for Soviet citizenship before the war was over. He was arrested for being a Communist shortly after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was severed, and died in the Bavarian camp of Wulzburg, along with his son.

In the brief Q & A that followed, someone asked the very smart question as to why no one had heard of Schulhoff until his recent revival. Harrison spoke to briefly to the politics of contemporary music that favored the cult of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. This was an interesting take  – that raised the tantalizing possibility that there might have been a tonal solution to the same very real issues faced by post-war composers.

The Ives Quartet will be revisiting the Schulhoff Quartet No. 1 in their September 30th and October 9th concerts. As always, they are worth following.

Side by Side by Side: a personal look at the Ives Quartet (pdf)

Side by Side by Side:
a personal look at the Ives Quartet (pdf)

With a hint of Spanish tunes, interspersed with chromatic passages from Freier and Mussumeli, I never knew that a string quartet could possibly sound this way. – Stark Insider February 28, 2011

By Cy Ashley Webb

Presenting a program that spans 250 years and moves fluidly from Mozart to a 1924 Rebecca Clarke work, the Ives Quartet cannot be easily pegged, except perhaps by their very nimbleness. This nimbleness was clearly at work when a last minute change in the ordering of the program changed how the audience felt at the end of intermission. By ending the first half with Mozart, instead of the more ambiguous Clark, the Quartet changed the experience of the concert, leaving the audience on terra firma.

I’m getting ahead of myself here, however. Friday’s performance opened with two separate pieces by Rebecca Clarke, a violist and composer primarily active in the first three decades of the last century.  Both of these pieces highlighted the considerable talents of violist Jodi Levitz. I was unfamiliar with Clarke – and subsequent forays out to iTunes were surprising as they revealed almost 100 entries – albeit none for theComodo et amabile (1924) that opened this performance. Although theComodo began with gentle wandering tones suggestive of Debussy, the music became increasing agitated, unified more by the pizzicato notes on Harrison’s cello and recurrent motives rather than any melody line. This music deserves a serious listen, which why I was disheartened that this particular piece was missing from iTunes because I’d love to hear it again as I’m sure I missed much of the complexity the work. The second piece,Adagio, was similar in tone to the first. Program notes likened this work to that of Bloch. Harrison’s cello drone halfway through was wonderfully startling.

Mozart’s String Quartet in B-flat Major, K 458, dubbed the “Hunt” followed.  The brilliantly articulated trill, tossed back and forth between the players, made the first movement just plain fun as it wound itself way between the trill and a second melody line. Unlike the Clarke pieces, which were tended toward vertical organization, this was more accessible. This playful snippet burst forth again in the fourth Allegro assai movement, which offered up a new degree of complexity. So much is happening here that one marvels because the string quartet was a relatively new phenomena when this was written.  It was a wonder how the quartet could possibly sustain the energy and joy that went into this piece.  The audience was energized and awestruck when this piece drew to a rollicking conclusion.

A brief intermission was followed by Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major (1903). Detailed program notes helped audience members make sense of the sonata form of the first and fourth movements.  More than anything, I was struck by what a privilege it is to hear this music live. I struggled to follow each musician separately, but they sounded so good together, this was quite impossible.  The first movement came to an exquisitely gentle end.  With a rapid pizzicato attack by all four players, the second movement got off to a startling beginning. With hint of Spanish tunes, interspersed with chromatic passages from Freier and Mussumeli, I never knew a string quartet could possibly sound this way. The fourth movement began frenetically, only to dissipate, and build to an astonishing end.

Once again I’m struck by how very fortunate we are to have the Ives Quartet at the south end of the Peninsula.  With a magic all their own, this quartet plays with a precision, cleanness and élan that we often reserve for well established groups.  They may just be the best-kept secret on the South Bay classical scene.

With a hint of Spanish tunes, interspersed with chromatic passages from Freier and Mussumeli, I never knew that a string quartet could possibly sound this way. – Stark Insider February 28, 2011

By Cy Ashley Webb

Presenting a program that spans 250 years and moves fluidly from Mozart to a 1924 Rebecca Clarke work, the Ives Quartet cannot be easily pegged, except perhaps by their very nimbleness. This nimbleness was clearly at work when a last minute change in the ordering of the program changed how the audience felt at the end of intermission. By ending the first half with Mozart, instead of the more ambiguous Clark, the Quartet changed the experience of the concert, leaving the audience on terra firma.

I’m getting ahead of myself here, however. Friday’s performance opened with two separate pieces by Rebecca Clarke, a violist and composer primarily active in the first three decades of the last century.  Both of these pieces highlighted the considerable talents of violist Jodi Levitz. I was unfamiliar with Clarke – and subsequent forays out to iTunes were surprising as they revealed almost 100 entries – albeit none for theComodo et amabile (1924) that opened this performance. Although theComodo began with gentle wandering tones suggestive of Debussy, the music became increasing agitated, unified more by the pizzicato notes on Harrison’s cello and recurrent motives rather than any melody line. This music deserves a serious listen, which why I was disheartened that this particular piece was missing from iTunes because I’d love to hear it again as I’m sure I missed much of the complexity the work. The second piece,Adagio, was similar in tone to the first. Program notes likened this work to that of Bloch. Harrison’s cello drone halfway through was wonderfully startling.

Mozart’s String Quartet in B-flat Major, K 458, dubbed the “Hunt” followed.  The brilliantly articulated trill, tossed back and forth between the players, made the first movement just plain fun as it wound itself way between the trill and a second melody line. Unlike the Clarke pieces, which were tended toward vertical organization, this was more accessible. This playful snippet burst forth again in the fourth Allegro assai movement, which offered up a new degree of complexity. So much is happening here that one marvels because the string quartet was a relatively new phenomena when this was written.  It was a wonder how the quartet could possibly sustain the energy and joy that went into this piece.  The audience was energized and awestruck when this piece drew to a rollicking conclusion.

A brief intermission was followed by Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major (1903). Detailed program notes helped audience members make sense of the sonata form of the first and fourth movements.  More than anything, I was struck by what a privilege it is to hear this music live. I struggled to follow each musician separately, but they sounded so good together, this was quite impossible.  The first movement came to an exquisitely gentle end.  With a rapid pizzicato attack by all four players, the second movement got off to a startling beginning. With hint of Spanish tunes, interspersed with chromatic passages from Freier and Mussumeli, I never knew a string quartet could possibly sound this way. The fourth movement began frenetically, only to dissipate, and build to an astonishing end.

Once again I’m struck by how very fortunate we are to have the Ives Quartet at the south end of the Peninsula.  With a magic all their own, this quartet plays with a precision, cleanness and élan that we often reserve for well established groups.  They may just be the best-kept secret on the South Bay classical scene.

If playing vibrato is not an authentic option for today’s performers, the question arises, ‘what is a musician to do when faced with the need for volume.’ – Stark Insider November 17, 2010

By Cy Ashley Webb

The last time I spoke to Susan Freier of the Ives Quartet, she began to explain how bowing techniques differ for baroque music. This began a thread that followed me through my recent review of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and continued as I read John Marchese’s gem of a book, The Violin Maker. Not being a string player, I’m always open to learning about anything that helps me listen more critically, and conversations with Freier opened a small window into that process.

This conversation reached full throttle during the first salon of the Ives Quartet season last Sunday during which Bettina Mussumeli, Jodi Levitz, Stephen Harrison and Susan Freier spoke at length about Haydn’s Opus 50. Rather than deconstruct the composition, members of the quartet addressed differences in how this piece was played twenty years ago vs how it is played today. When Stephen Harrison opened the conversation noting that twenty years ago, sustain was king, and students were urged to play with a continuous vibrato like Jascha Heifetz, I positively began to quiver because I’d just been listening to Joshua Bell comment on what you do when you stop playing vibrato.

Most people recognize vibrato when they hear it. The term is used to describe pulsating variation in pitch when playing or singing. A deep throaty opera singer usually employs vibrato while singing, as do most string instruments. It’s so easy to confuse vibrato with tremulo (pulsating changes in volume) that the terms are often used interchangeably. The reason for this confusion became apparent as Harrison pointed out that twenty years ago, the message was to play LOUD. However, when string players boost their volume by playing vibrato, they are not necessarily playing the way the music was originally envisioned.

Volume and vibrato become an issue for musicians because conditions today are far more demanding than when this music was originally written. Freier noted that when the quartet is on tour in Europe, they tend to play small venues with lots of marble that reflect the sounds, rather than large heavily carpeted and curtained venues that just eat up them up. The acoustics of these venues are more consistent with what this music was written for.

If playing vibrato is not an authentic option for today’s performers, the question arises what a musician is to do when faced with the need for volume. Mussumeli provided a partial answer to this as she distinguished between old instruments with modern setups and modern instruments with old setups. By changing strings from gut to titanium, allowing more pressure at the bridge and varying the fingerboard, one ultimately arrives at a more authentic (albeit less resonant) sound in a modern venue. Mussumeli’s observations reminded me of Sam Zygumtowicz’s line in The Violin Maker. Commenting on instruments made by Stradivarius and Guarneri, he says “It’s like those old American cars in Cuba that were there before Castro, and are still running. They’re classic Chevy’s or Fords, but chances are that most of the parts are different.” It’s only through what Mussumeli termed a “modern set up” that we use these instruments today. She continued her discussion by presenting variations in the evolution of the bow. I confess, I got lost here as Mussulemi presented so many bows in rapid succession that I was unable to follow her completely.

In addition to technique and instrumentation, Jodi Levitz pointed out that notation also stands in our way of getting at a truly authentic performance. My ears perked up here, because I’d recently listened to composer Erik Ulman explain that not every note was written down in baroque music as originally published. In many instances, the sheet music we’ve grown up with is an educated person’s best guess and can be easily trumped by subsequent scholarship. As Levitz noted, we’re textualists – and what is written becomes what is true. When one of the musicians explained that most sheet music contains suggestions for ornamentation, my mind flashed to the first five pages of Bach’s Selections from Anna Magdalena’s Notebook languishing on my piano – pages that detail suggested ornaments and when they can be omitted. Much to the delight of the audience, the group played the identical piece with different ornaments.

The Ives Quartet will be presenting a second Salon in April. If the excellent discussion that took place Sunday is any indication, this second Salon should be equally inspiring.

If playing vibrato is not an authentic option for today’s performers, the question arises, 'what is a musician to do when faced with the need for volume.' – Stark Insider November 17, 2010

By Cy Ashley Webb

The last time I spoke to Susan Freier of the Ives Quartet, she began to explain how bowing techniques differ for baroque music. This began a thread that followed me through my recent review of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and continued as I read John Marchese’s gem of a book, The Violin Maker. Not being a string player, I’m always open to learning about anything that helps me listen more critically, and conversations with Freier opened a small window into that process.

This conversation reached full throttle during the first salon of the Ives Quartet season last Sunday during which Bettina Mussumeli, Jodi Levitz, Stephen Harrison and Susan Freier spoke at length about Haydn’s Opus 50. Rather than deconstruct the composition, members of the quartet addressed differences in how this piece was played twenty years ago vs how it is played today. When Stephen Harrison opened the conversation noting that twenty years ago, sustain was king, and students were urged to play with a continuous vibrato like Jascha Heifetz, I positively began to quiver because I’d just been listening to Joshua Bell comment on what you do when you stop playing vibrato.

Most people recognize vibrato when they hear it. The term is used to describe pulsating variation in pitch when playing or singing. A deep throaty opera singer usually employs vibrato while singing, as do most string instruments. It’s so easy to confuse vibrato with tremulo (pulsating changes in volume) that the terms are often used interchangeably. The reason for this confusion became apparent as Harrison pointed out that twenty years ago, the message was to play LOUD. However, when string players boost their volume by playing vibrato, they are not necessarily playing the way the music was originally envisioned.

Volume and vibrato become an issue for musicians because conditions today are far more demanding than when this music was originally written. Freier noted that when the quartet is on tour in Europe, they tend to play small venues with lots of marble that reflect the sounds, rather than large heavily carpeted and curtained venues that just eat up them up. The acoustics of these venues are more consistent with what this music was written for.

If playing vibrato is not an authentic option for today’s performers, the question arises what a musician is to do when faced with the need for volume. Mussumeli provided a partial answer to this as she distinguished between old instruments with modern setups and modern instruments with old setups. By changing strings from gut to titanium, allowing more pressure at the bridge and varying the fingerboard, one ultimately arrives at a more authentic (albeit less resonant) sound in a modern venue. Mussumeli’s observations reminded me of Sam Zygumtowicz’s line in The Violin Maker. Commenting on instruments made by Stradivarius and Guarneri, he says “It’s like those old American cars in Cuba that were there before Castro, and are still running. They’re classic Chevy’s or Fords, but chances are that most of the parts are different.” It’s only through what Mussumeli termed a “modern set up” that we use these instruments today. She continued her discussion by presenting variations in the evolution of the bow. I confess, I got lost here as Mussulemi presented so many bows in rapid succession that I was unable to follow her completely.

In addition to technique and instrumentation, Jodi Levitz pointed out that notation also stands in our way of getting at a truly authentic performance. My ears perked up here, because I’d recently listened to composer Erik Ulman explain that not every note was written down in baroque music as originally published. In many instances, the sheet music we’ve grown up with is an educated person’s best guess and can be easily trumped by subsequent scholarship. As Levitz noted, we’re textualists – and what is written becomes what is true. When one of the musicians explained that most sheet music contains suggestions for ornamentation, my mind flashed to the first five pages of Bach’s Selections from Anna Magdalena’s Notebook languishing on my piano – pages that detail suggested ornaments and when they can be omitted. Much to the delight of the audience, the group played the identical piece with different ornaments.

The Ives Quartet will be presenting a second Salon in April. If the excellent discussion that took place Sunday is any indication, this second Salon should be equally inspiring.