Wall-less chambers in 'chamber music': Dudok Quartet Amsterdam makes Indianapolis debut
 |
| Violinist Marleen Wester and violist Marie-Louise de Jong predominate in this group portrait. |
acquaintance with chamber-music groups online. It culminates repeatedly whenever he is able to schedule a visit here by an ensemble, whether a return engagement or a local debut.
Wednesday night was a sterling example of the latter sort of husbandry. The Dudok Quartet Amsterdam, with its alluring representation online, became eligible for inclusion on the EMS schedule when it acquired representation by Maestro Arts.
So a large audience gathered at the Indiana History Center to become acquainted with the far-sighted Dutch string quartet in a program of Schubert, Shostakovich, and Bushra El-Turk, a contemporary British composer of Lebanese extraction. "The music we play is never old or new, but always relevant and present," the group proclaims on its website.
El-Turk's "Three Tributes" received its premiere in 2024 on a DQA commission. It represents the composer's dedication to her musical heritage. In this case that focuses on the Nahda period of Lebanese history, which spans the mid-19th and the early 20th centuries. Each of its movements is a portrait named for a prominent woman in that geographically limited renaissance: Zakieh Agob, Haseeba Mowshe, and Rasmiya Jumaa.
Avoiding a trite pastiche-style use of old music, the work folded old recordings of those artists into the composer's ear-stretching inspirations for the string quartet, with an appropriate set of bows and the inclusion of vocal passages (wordless or hummed) by DQA members.
The result gave the impression of a new kind of unity, specific to this composition and organically conceived. The tribute aspect put forward by the piece's title was embodied quite literally by this quartet. The audience was held spell-bound, an effect consciously desired across the wide span of the group's artistry.
DQA is explicit about its interest in reaching beyond music on the page toward the meaning it may suggest, meanings that should not be hidden. Dmitri Shostakovich, a composer whose career was inflected throughout by the repressive regime he had to endure, touched on this pressure in writing about his 7th symphony. which shed musical light on the siege of Leningrad in World War II. "I did not write so-called battle music," he said. "I wanted to convey the meaning of dreadful events."
Similarly, the Dutch musicians seemed to embrace the tragic trajectory of the Soviet composer's post-war Quartet no. 3 in F major, op. 73, which ended the program. Thirty-five years ago, in an Indianapolis Star review of the Brodsky Quartet's recording of this intense, five-movement work, I noted that it is imbued with a tragic quality, which is "then overlaid with sardonic humor in the finale."
As DQA played it Wednesday, the humorous overlay was properly thin and calculated; the tragedy stubbornly prevailed into the hushed, resigned final bars. The effect was marvelously moving. It set up a less troubled display of this ensemble's internal rapport and sensitivity — the encore, Tchaikovsky's "Andante cantabile."
The concert opened with Schubert's String Quartet no. 10 in E-flat, a charming work by a precocious teen-ager. Nicknamed the "Household Quartet," the work benefits from a comfy interpretation suiting that designation, which DQA presented with bright cheer. The way phrases were connected, though they encompass the composer's mature habit of suddenly changing expressive direction, seemed to suit the score's modest display of Viennese craftsmanship.
First violinist Judith Van Driel, in oral program notes about the concert's first half, touted the peerless lyrical beauty of the third movement. The performance substantiated that assessment, as did the quartet's amiable, expertly blended interpretation of the whole piece. Her pre-encore, explicit wish that the DQA would love to accept a second EMS invitation here someday will be duly noted, I'm sure.
Comments
Post a Comment