"Women in Music" - the Carmel Quartet (Israel) presents works by women composers and discusses three courageous women composers

 

Yoel Greenberg,Sarit Shley Zondiner,Tali Goldberg,Rachel Ringelstein,Tami Waterman (Courtesy Sarit Shley Zondiner)

Opening "Women in Music", Concert No.2 of the Carmel Quartet's 2023-2024 Strings and More series, Prof. Yoel Greenberg, the quartet's musical director and violist, spoke about brave women. The concert itself was dedicated to the memory of one such brave woman - Staff Sgt. Yam Glass, 20, an observation soldier in the Israeli Armed Forces, who was murdered on October 7 2023 at the outset of the current war. This writer attended the English-language presentation at the Jerusalem Music Centre, Mishkenot Shaananim, on January 17th, 2024.

 

The evening opened with much interesting information and the performance of works by three courageous women composers - composers of three different periods and from three different continents. The first movement of Maddalena Lombardini Sirman's Quartet Opus 3 No.2 was performed behind a screen, symbolizing the iron grate behind which the brilliant young women musicians of the Ospedale di San Lazzaro dei Mendicanti (one of four such music schools in Venice) were obliged to perform in the name of modesty. Lombardini (1745-1818), one of the school's most famous pupils, was a virtuoso violinist (a student of the great Tartini), a composer and, later on, a singer. She was the first woman to compose string quartets at a time when the genre was still extremely new and in its formal, experimental stage. Indeed, Prof. Greenberg referred to Lombardini Sirman as a "trailblazer for women". The Carmel Quartet's buoyant playing highlighted the slow–fast two-movement quartet's freshness, its geniality, variety of colours and richness of form.

 

It was only in the 1990s, when women musicians championed her work, that interest in American composer Amy Beach (1867-1944) led to a revisiting of her compositions and newfound respect for her achievements. A child prodigy, she became a virtuoso pianist, emerging as the most frequently performed composer of her generation and the first woman to succeed as a composer of large-scale symphonic music. Beach assumed many leadership positions, advancing the cause of American women composers and proving to be a stickler for authenticity in the quotation of folk themes. One instance of the latter is her Quartet in One Movement Op.89, through which are threaded three Eskimo (or Inuit) tunes. The Carmel players gave expression to the splendid writing of the tripartite piece, its beauty, lyricism and intensity and to the textures arising from its mix of dissonance, chromatics and irresolute tonality, presenting a fine example of American music of the time. 

 

And to a work of another go-ahead young woman composer. "Shira" for string quartet was written especially for this program by prominent Israeli composer Sarit Shley Zondiner (b.1984), today a faculty member of Haifa University. Shley Zondiner addresses the impact that background has on foreground, both musically and emotionally. "Shira" (Hebrew: song, singing), two movements written for string quartet and recorded electronic sound, takes the listener into a sound world of uncompromising timbres, otherworldly effects, engaging layering and intensity. Interesting music indeed, the melodic- and textural sentiments expressed in it certainly sounding indicative of these anguished times. The Carmel players' reading of this challenging piece was scholarly and detailed, but also decidedly insightful and compassionate. Of her music, the composer writes: " I create complex soundscapes, utilizing extended techniques and combining 'noise', rich harmonies and wide-ranging melodies."

 

The evening's subject matter - women's standing in music in the western world through the ages - was presented captivatingly by Prof. Greenberg (a native English speaker), with much interesting and amusing detail added (in fine English) by the three other Carmel Quartet members - Rachel Ringelstein and Tali Goldberg (violin) and 'cellist Tami Waterman. If "sexist" can be defined as "characterized by- or showing prejudice, stereotyping or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex" one must assume that the world of western music has been dominated and impeded by this attitude for a very long time.

 

There was also talk of the concept of "masculine" and "feminine" types of music. Beethoven's music was considered "masculine". In 1927, French dramatist, novelist and mystic Romain Rolland proclaimed Beethoven's masculinity, rejecting the Romantics' association of the composer's music as having feminine qualities. The "Women in Music" event concluded with Ludwig Van Beethoven's Quartet Op.95 in F minor "Serioso" (1810). As to the quartet's opening, with the four instruments in unison pouring forth one of the composer's most violent statements, the first violin (Ringelstein) in wild octave leaps and the ensuing slashing scale passages, all these would suggest that the work reflects the composer's depth of despair at the time. The players' songful, questioning and reflective rendition of the ensuing Allegretto gave way to the strongly chiselled and propulsive Allegro, its intensity temporarily relieved by the hymn-like nature of the middle section. As to the final movement, following the tense, contemplative Larghetto opening, we meet Beethoven in a sudden surge of major-key good humour. Interestingly, Beethoven acknowledged the radical nature of the work when he wrote to Sir George Smart (a member of the Philharmonic Society, London) maintaining that the Op.95 Quartet had been "written for a small circle of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public". This request may have been made due to the work's prematurely experimental nature…not, I am sure, due to its masculinity.