Johannes Quartet at Seaport Museum

Do I hear waltz? No, it's a metronome:
A mechanical evening with the Johannes Quartet

BEERI MOALEM

There’s something disturbing about the way the Johannes Quartet plays. Their playing is practically scientifically accurate. The ensemble's rhythmic precision, intonation and adherence to the score is remarkable. So remarkable that it makes the occasional error (I caught three) blare out.

As I listened, I could just hear them in rehearsal, deciding their interpretation based on dots and lines in the score rather than by listening to the music. Deciding to play the opening to Beethoven's Opus 95 not too loud because he wrote only forte, and not fortissimo. Refusing to slow down for a tender melody in Mendelssohn just because he didn't indicate a ritard in the score. Playing Bartok's carnal music as if they were researchers in lab coats, weighing it to the milligram and sizing it to the millimeter, all the while forgetting that it originated as drunken, dusty folk music. It's music, not a calculus problem!

This approach is a symptom of what’s wrong with classical music nowadays: the cold, calculating, analytical adherence to the score, as if it were a set of instructions for an experiment rather than an outpouring of expression. The problem— which stems from disagreement as to how to interpret the music— pervades the professional music world, from conservatories to orchestras. One musician in the ensemble wants this section slower, another thinks it should go a little faster. They argue for a while, but fail to reach a consensus. Finally they let a machine settle their dispute, stick a metronome on their stand, and let its mechanical ticks dictate their "music-making."

Shutting their ears and hearts

Case in point: Mendelssohn's String Quartet Op. 44 No. 1. It’s marked "Molto Allegro Vivace," i.e., very fast, happy and lively. OK, great: It starts with a sizzling accompaniment in the second violin and viola, a vigorous bass line in the cello and an impassioned first violin line. But after it bursts on the scene, the music calms down and yields some gentler, sweeter themes, including a gem of a melody in the viola. All the frazzled energy of the beginning later subsides to a hushed and carefully treading second theme.

Mendelssohn never indicates a change in tempo at this point, but the change in character and energy is obvious. Such changes naturally require a corresponding change in sound and tempo by the performers. But the Johannes Quartet shut their ears and hearts to these changes, put their heads down, and determined to charge through the tender secondary subjects with the same blazing speed with which they started the piece.

Listening to this felt like being rushed through a gallery of amazing artifacts without getting a chance to examine the details. The Johannes players ran through the piece at breakneck pace, leaving the nuance trampled behind in their wake. I could practically hear the metronome clicking.

Now, I'm sure that if Mendelssohn had indicated the obvious-- putting in a marking such as a fermata, or a ritard, or maybe even a dolce— the faithful Johannes interpreters of the score would have been glad to alter the tempo. But do we really expect composers to dictate every single detail to us? Where would it end?

The scary thing is, the Johannes folks would probably agree with me on the following proposition: Unless it's in the score, don't do it. “But it says Molto Allegro!” I can hear them appealing, "Molto Allegro VIVACE! We're not allowed to slow down!" The result sounds like ten-year-old prodigies performing music beyond their years: scarily exact, but devoid of understanding.

You must make it loud

Another case in point: The opening to Beethoven's Op. 95. I just heard the entire string section of the Curtis Orchestra, augmented with double basses, play this work under Alan Gilbert, so I may be a little spoiled. But this opening is a statement if there ever was one: F-minor. The entire quartet in unison, in the low register. Step-wise, strict and to the point. No leaps, no funny business. The quartet has a nickname: Serioso.

This opening is marked forte. One "f", as apposed to the double "ff" fortissimo, or the triple "fff" fortississimo. (Tchaikovsky would occasionally use five "f"s to make a point.) So it's a modest forte. Does that mean one should tone it down? The opening to the darkest quartet ever written (as of 1810)? A statement that is followed by furious responsive cries, and is later contrasted by a tender piano section? You must make it loud.

OK, you have to save a little bit of extra volume for the moments when Beethoven indeed marks fortissimo, but that doesn't mean that you don't make the opening as gruff and angry as it needs to be. The Johannes Quartet played the opening of Beethoven's Opus 95 with such reserved and impotent scratching articulation that it might as well have been fingernails tapping on formica. I don't know why they chose weak short jabs, as opposed to a strong full sound. They sounded like four typewriters.

Bartok without the rage

Third and final case: Bartok. The string quartets of this unusual Hungarian composer have been described as "stretching the limits of the intelligible" or as "cathartic" in the concert's program notes; they have been compared to "wartime air raid sirens," and even recently here on the Broad Street Review, referred to as "orgiastic"! But alas, Bartok's Fourth Quartet too was played with a lackluster approach. The barbaric marches and carnal cries in the first and last movements were woefully lacking in volume and rage. The pizzicato movement was lacking in humor. The second movement was good. The slow movement at the core of the piece was lacking lugubrious passion in the solos.

I don't know if the Johannes Quartet was tired from its winter tour, plagued by an arctic storm that seems to follow them wherever they perform. Or is it the fact that, as described in their official bio, they are "four outstanding musicians who take time away from their busy careers to pursue their love of the string quartet literature," as opposed to dedicating their careers to it? The bar has been set high by a current profusion of dedicated string quartets.

I don't mean to sound too harsh— this is largely a protest against much of the classical music world in general, not just the Johannes String Quartet.

When a living composer lurks nearby

One last piece closed the program: the Philadelphia premiere of a quartet by Esa-Pekka Salonen. It’s labeled simply as "String Quartet (2008)" in advertisements and the program notes, but first violinist Soovin Kim explained from the stage that the title is Homunculus, a small piece with a lot of music in it. The Homunculus is full of hair-raising tritones and interesting surprises. It’s a pretty good piece and was probably the best played on the program.

Or do I think that because I don’t know the piece? Or is it because the composer was there to guide them— to tell them himself what he didn't mention in the score?



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