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| Yoel Greenberg,Rachel Ringelstein,Tami Waterman,Tali Goldberg(Shuli Waterman) |
“Noble Savages” was the somewhat enigmatic title given to the Carmel
Quartet’s recent concert of the Strings and More series. This writer attended
the concert at the Jerusalem Music Centre, Mishkenot Sha’ananim, Jerusalem, on
March 12th 2018, in which explanations and readings were given in English.
Directed by violist Yoel Greenberg, the series adds lively discussion as to the
music played, with all members of the quartet taking part in that aspect of the
event. Artists taking part were violinists Rachel Ringelstein (1st violin) and
Tali Goldberg, Yoel Greenberg-viola and Tami Waterman-’cello.
In his humorous and lively manner, Dr Yoel Greenberg opened the evening
with a quiz. Audience members were asked to identify from what period various
snippets of music came. This turned out to be no easy task! All the examples
were taken from Bela Bartok’s String Quartet No.5 and Ludwig van Beethoven’s
String Quartet in F-major op.135. The first half of the evening would focus on
the 1934 Bartok quartet. Greenberg spoke of Bartok’s Hungarian identity, his
research into folk music (not just of his native Hungary) and his search to
find natural sound, free of “Romantic grandiloquence”. Bartok’s fifth quartet brims
with folk influence, one outstanding example being the asymmetrical Bulgarian
dance of the third movement. Greenberg spoke of the work’s symmetrical arc
structure and of two other visual/sound associations with which Bartok was
fascinated - that of insects and of the sounds of night. The combination of the
above-mentioned elements is what caused Bartok’s music to have both objective
and subjective aspects. The Carmel Quartet’s performance of the highly
virtuosic work was incisive and uncompromising, yet addressing its moments of
empathy, the mystery of the world of insects and the composer’s strangely
humorous removal of a folk song from its own tonality (2nd movement), the compound
rhythm of the Bulgarian peasant dance (3rd movement) followed by the delicate,
desolate otherworldly 4th movement, to return to the driven, acerbic, intensive
effect on reaching the 5th movement. The artists presented the composer’s world
of strange effects - of hisses, sighs, drones and pulses – existing together
with classical forms on one musically rich and complex canvas, both shimmering
and acerbic, yet always articulate, profound and sincere.
In reverse chronological order, Beethoven’s String Quartet in F-major
op.135 occupied the second part of the program. Beethoven’s last complete work,
composed in October 1826, written only a few months before his death in March
1827, this quartet differs from the monumental, soul-searching and
sprawling late quartets (and piano sonatas). Beethoven’s personal life had
descended into swirling chaos; he himself wrote much about his own suffering.
This work, however, with its airy, transparent texture, its smaller proportions
and playful nature, seems enigmatically removed from the struggle and suffering
expressed in the above-mentioned late works. But it does ask questions, namely
in the final movement bearing Beethoven’s strange inscription “Der schwer
gefasste Entschluss” (The Difficult Resolution) and on whose manuscript
he asks “Muss es sein?” (Must it be?), later to answer in the affirmative.
Greenberg spoke of Beethoven’s humour, his liking for puns, the work’s
multiplicity of unconnected themes and the fact that, for the composer, there
was little distance between comedy and seriousness. In the first movement, one
as spare in texture as any quartet movement Beethoven had ever written, the
Carmel players, in fine communication with each other, focused on objective
playing and beautiful melodic shaping. They displayed the Vivace (2nd)
movement’s humour in its “uncoordinated”, bumptious utterances and eruptive
fortissimo section, to be followed by the profound, soul-searching character of
the third movement, referred to by Greenberg as “one of Beethoven’s most
moving”, as the instruments’ lower registers presented its theme. Then to the
final movement, with Beethoven’s questions, its teasing playfulness alternating
with anguished sounds. Yoel Greenberg suggested that Beethoven’s dilemma was to
do with the complications of writing a string quartet. In a letter to his
publisher, Beethoven wrote: “Here, my dear friend, is my last quartet. It will
be the last; and indeed, it has given me much trouble. For I could not bring
myself to compose the last movement. But as your letters were reminding me of
it, in the end I decided to compose it. And that is the reason why I have
written the motto: “The difficult resolution–Must it be? It must be, it must
be!” A black sheep among Beethoven’s late repertoire, this was certainly a
very curious and interesting work to discuss and present at the Carmel
Quartet’s Strings and More series. As to its moods and gestures, Yoel Greenberg
summed up his own thoughts with “we can never be sure which Beethoven we are
looking at”.
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