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Review

Juilliard group soars behind work by Wolf

With each member perfectly in synch, the Juilliard String Quartet gives a near-flawless performance at Ruth Eckerd Hall.

By JOHN FLEMING
Published March 23, 2005

CLEARWATER - The great discovery in the Juilliard String Quartet's concert Tuesday night at Ruth Eckerd Hall was Hugo Wolf's Quartet in D minor.

Wolf (1860-1903) is best known for his art songs, as well as his music criticism for a Vienna newspaper, but his quartet is an awesome work, almost an hour long and extraordinarily complex and dramatic.

This was especially true in the first movement, where many passages had each member of the quartet playing at what seemed like cross purposes. But there was always a connecting pattern that kept the whole thing perfectly cohesive no matter how many thick clusters of notes the players hurled out. There was an unspeakably gorgeous harmonic effect by all four, lushly held, just before the frantic close of the movement.

Wolf's quartet is not flawless. The second movement isn't very interesting. The third movement is deceptive, starting out with a repeated exchange between the cello and the other three instruments that seems too schematically plotted, but after about 10 minutes the engrossing polylayered density returns. The spiky, irregular rhythms of the finale are like a fractured Viennese waltz.

In a way, the intellectual intensity of the music was reminiscent of the sparkling dialogue in Michael Frayn's play about nuclear physicists, Copenhagen, only the Wolf quartet was brainier.

You could probably write an entertaining play about the personalities of a string quartet. In the Juilliard, first violin Joel Smirnoff and cellist Joel Krosnick, by virtue of their instruments' place in the ensemble, but also because of their stylistic flair, tend to draw the listener's attention.

Smirnoff plays with a kind of nervy brilliance. Krosnick is one of the great cellists. Violist Samuel Rhodes, a 36-year veteran of the quartet, has the facilitator role, musically speaking. Second violin Ronald Copes is the smooth supporting player.

To hear quartet playing of such a wonderful high level was a pleasure.

The concert opened with Schubert's passionate, inward-looking Quartettsatz. With only one movement completed, the eight-minute work is like Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony, which has only two completed movements. Musicologists figure he probably planned to write four movements for each, but nobody really knows. Both are so marvelous that maybe he said all he had to say.

Mozart's Quartet in D major (K. 499), the "Hoffmeister," occupied the second half of the program. Mozart biographer Alfred Einstein finds "despairing under a mask of gaiety" in the quartet, but the Juilliard gave it a relaxed, expansive reading. They performed an elegant Haydn minuet as an encore.

[Last modified March 23, 2005, 00:54:07]