Illustrious EMS guest returns to focus on Beethoven as season ends

Expressiveness reached a new level of boldness in Beethoven's late quartets, written when his hearing was gone and only his internal sense of pitch and formal  relationships could guide what he set down on paper. The apex of this period at his creative height was the "Great Fugue" that was originally designed as the finale of the String Quartet in B-flat major, op. 130.

On Wednesday night, the Juilliard String Quartet concluded its Indianapolis return visit on the Ensemble Music Society series with Grosse Fuge (op. 133), which was withdrawn as the op. 130 finale at the composer's publisher's request. The revised op. 130 opened the program. The substitute last movement is in keeping with the  adventurous but more compatible terrain of its first three movements. 

The Basile Theater at the Indiana History Center was packed with patrons who also got to hear two contemporary pieces commenting on op. 130 through the 21st-century perspective of Jörg Widmann, a German composer. The commissioned works are String Quartet No, 8 (Beethoven-Study III), which roams among the music of Op. 130 as a whole and Cavatina: String Quartet No. 10 (Beethoven-Study V), which treats imaginatively op. 130's heart-melting next-to-last movement, titled after the Italian for "short aria."

With different personnel, Juilliard Quartet's EMS appearances date back to 1946.

I was struck by the Juilliard's tightly unified but rather novel approach to the full quartet, especially from the first movement on. Though the quartet's interpretation was fully tender and thoughtful, it seemed to partly deconstruct the score on the way to understanding Widmann better. Once I heard Beethoven-Study III for the first time, however, it was clear that this ensemble's approach to the original can be described best if I borrow a term familiar from literary and rhetorical criticism: prolepsis.

To make short work of this borrowed perception, I had best quote the dictionary definition of prolepsis: "the representation or assumption of a future act or development as if presently existing or accomplished." Flash-forward, we might call it in movie terms. 

If last night's performance of op. 130 is to be clearly understood, it helps to consider the Juilliard's version as proleptic. It seemed designed for the audience to look forward to Widmann's music as if Beethoven had anticipated what Widmann would make of his score. This isn't necessarily mysticism, yet I wonder if there had been no Widmann involved in the the current JSQ's thoughts on Beethoven's op. 130, the earlier work might have sounded different. 

By no means do I feel the Juilliard misrepresented op. 130. It's just that the ensemble's

Jörg Widmann, twice commissioned by JSQ

refreshing perspective was animated by what Widmann had done in roaming freely about the earlier score, interrupting himself and Beethoven as well, re-engaging the material. Along the way, he has fashioned an unconventional way of understanding Beethoven's music, making the most of changes of expressive direction as well as shifts of phrasing and tempo.

I doubt the JSQ takes Beethoven as some kind of preparation for Widmann, as if the contemporary German composer revised his predecessor's thoughts for the better. But if Widmann the composer can be said to pay creative tribute to Beethoven's op. 130,  so does the JSQ through having generated a living composer's response and displaying the outcome in its interpretation of a masterpiece from the 1820s.

Ronald Copes, the veteran second violinist of the Juilliard, explained to the audience that Widmann felt he had become a close friend of Beethoven through composing the two commissioned pieces. Like any close friend, especially those lucky enough to be living at the same time, Widmann felt he could poke fun at Beethoven (even if Beethoven couldn't return the favor). Indeed, there's some gentle mockery of the earlier composer's more grandiose gestures and strenuous probing of depths.

The quartet represented Beethoven's humor vividly in the third movement (Andante con moto, ma non troppo) with whimsical exchanges of material and "holds," as well as in its blithe successor (Alla danza tedesca: Allegro assai).  The  fast movements had the kind of high spirits and evocations of vernacular music that recalled, of all people, Charles Ives. 

But just as Beethoven stayed at a deep level in his Cavatina (fifth movement), so does Widmann sustain a less kidding tone in Beethoven-Study V. He makes the points of rest in Beethoven's original more tentative, even less sure in pitch (I wondered if quarter-tone intonation was sometimes called for). 

Tenderness to the point of anguish was emphasized; significantly, the delicate passage with instruction to the first violin to sound "beklemmt"  (oppressed) was quoted, not just alluded to. There was free use of techniques Beethoven rarely if ever used: sliding tones, harmonics, mutes, sustained tremolos,  sul ponticello (near the bridge)  and col legno (with the wood of the bow) playing. 

OI course, the Great Fugue is almost beyond commentary, whether verbal or musical. Copes and his younger colleagues (violinist Areta Zhulla, violist Molly Carr, and cellist Astrid Schween) presented a well-proportioned, vivid,  predictably challenging and challenged account of this music. Igor Stravinsky's inarguable assessment of the Great Fugue (quoted in Nicholas Johnson's program note) could justly be etched in stone about this work: "an absolutely contemporary piece of music that will be contemporary forever." That was splendidly reaffirmed in this performance.