Jerusalem Quartet extends a warm farewell to EMS' 2022-23 season

Presenting the twilight of classicism and of romanticism  in the same program might seem like too much dusk, but the Jerusalem String Quartet cast lots of daylight on Mendelssohn, Webern, and Tchaikovsky Wednesday night at the Indiana History Center to conclude Ensemble Music Society's current season. 

The name "Webern" might have spurred an anxious chill in some patrons previously unaware that the Austrian composer's 1905 "Langsamer Satz" (Slow Movement) is a lengthy exercise in the late Romantic idiom he was soon to cast off as a student of Arnold Schoenberg. Webern would go beyond the older composer as an avatar of 20th-century modernism. (He was to be shot dead 40 years later by a jittery American soldier just after World War II.)

Tight-knit Jerusalem Quartet charms audience here.

Slow Movement occupied a central place in a program bookended by Mendelssohn's String Quartet No. 4 in E minor, op. 44, no. 2 and Tchaikovsky's Quartet No. 1 in D major, op. 11. Melodic emphasis as the 19th century had developed it is conspicuous in the Webern piece. Hints of where Webern was to go away from romanticism are offered late in the work, with accompaniment patterns that sound more individualized and in contrast to the generating tune. The Jerusalem Quartet made a strong case for better acquaintance with the particular twilight era from which Slow Movement emerged. 

The concert opened with a Mendelssohn performance characterized by deft passing around of its main material in the first movement, similar to Classical Era procedures. It was succeeded  in the second-movement scherzo by speedy, nonchalantly "shuddering" phrases shared among the four players. Landing firmly in an era of romantic inflection that Mendelssohn was temperamentally guarded about, the third movement presents the tender, emotionally yielding side of the North German composer. The finale, in this performance, put a cap on the Jerusalem Quartet's dashing, well-coordinated manner.

Years of excessive concert exposure to the music of Tchaikovsky have left me jaundice-eyed about the Russian composer's achievement. Yes, this string quartet is a milestone in the burgeoning of Russian chamber music, and Tchaikovsky came to represent the entrance of the giant Slavic country into the Western canon. But it also, especially in the first movement, exemplifies his wearying tendency to ramp up the excitement with little of substance behind it, relying on sequences more tendentious than Vivaldi's, for example, to stimulate players and listeners alike. The unplanned relief of a broken string after it launched allowed first violinist Alexander Pavlovsky to go offstage to replace it. When he returned, everyone was ready to sink into Tchaikovsky's toying with our nerve ends uninterrupted.

The melodic gift is undeniable, and we get one of the most famous examples in the Andante cantabile second movement. Hymnlike in texture, the music even ends with an "Amen." The rhythmically enlivened third movement is mercifully compact, showing off at a distance Tchaikovsky's affinity for the ballet, which is  even more prominent in the finale. There, the dialogue between Pavlovsky and Ori Kam, the quartet's violist sporting an uncommonly rich tone, was an example of how firm the rapport among its members seems typical of this ensemble.

Further confirming the love affair between the Jerusalem Quartet and the near-capacity audience Wednesday night, the encore by a Ukrainian composer (two of the quartet's members were born in Ukraine) was greeted with rapture. The piece is an arrangement of the late Myroslav Skoryk's simply titled "Melody," and it represented the ultimate in the relaxation the Jerusalem Quartet can project along a spectrum whose other end radiated propulsive energy.