Concert Reviews
Hugo Wolf Quartett at Dumbarton Church
By Charles Downey, The Washington Post, Monday, October 17, 2011
The Hugo Wolf Quartett came to play serious music, and they did so with severity of concentration and devotion to the craftsmanship of sound, devoid of theatrical contortion and hair-flipping. In the first concert of the season Saturday at Dumbarton Church in Georgetown, the mostly Austrian members of the string quartet (the second violinist was born in Switzerland) put all of their performance’s considerable drama and engagement into the music, rather than into their gestures and facial expressions.
Unlike some other string quartets, these four musicians did not feel the need to scrape every last ounce of sound from the strings. Beginning with a glowing rendition of Schubert’s one-movement “Quartettsatz” in C minor, D. 703, they played with a mellow amber tone that was carefully balanced and rarified. The cello did not growl, the viola did not bark and the violins did not wail over the top of the ensemble. The intensity of the performance came from the fleet tempo and the rise and fall of expressive phrasing.
Schumann’s F major quartet (Op. 41, No. 2) had a more restless quality. It is a less appealing piece than the ethereal Schubert, perhaps more neurotic, but the quartet gave it lightness and beauty, especially the rowdy fun of the fourth movement, playing that took risks, even if that meant dropping some notes along the way. Finally, the D minor string quartet of the group’s namesake, Hugo Wolf, was given a performance evoking the existential desperation of Goethe’s Faust. The playful scherzo of the second movement had dark overtones; the vivacious fourth movement was full of witty repartee; and the third movement featured the high chords of the three upper instruments, radiant like a pristine aureole.
Vogler Quartet, a guide in an exhilarating musical journey
By Robert Battey, The Washington Post, Sunday, March 20, 2011
The Vogler Quartet, founded a quarter-century ago in East Berlin, has not had a large U.S. profile, even though it made an early splash with a series of fine recordings on RCA/BMG. In the past decade, it appeared only once at the Kennedy Center and never at the Library of Congress. I mention this because those prestigious venues have clearly missed the boat with this remarkable ensemble, which is superior to most of the groups they present. The group’s intonation was pure as it played Dvorak and Beethoven.
Fortunately, Dumbarton Concerts in Georgetown has brought the Vogler here twice recently, and Saturday evening’s performance confirmed its place near the top of the profession. In a program of Beethoven, Erwin Schulhoff and Dvorak, the group displayed the highest technical polish and a striking unanimity of style and purpose.
Unanimity is not actually a prerequisite for great quartet playing; some groups make a virtue of each member’s individuality. But the Vogler’s style focuses on the overall conception and architecture of the music. Compared to other top groups, its expressive palette might even be called “limited”; none of its members has a particularly rich or soloistic tone (least of all the first violinist), and it doesn’t sound as though they’re using top-quality Italian instruments. But the emphasis on purity of delivery with complete alignment of every musical detail is almost exhilarating to experience.
The Vogler’s intonation is stunningly pure; chords ring out with a nimbus of beauty. There is no showboating or overplaying. The quartet offers perfectly matched bow-strokes, a solid, natural sense of rhythm and voice-leading that bespeaks the deepest knowledge of the score. Every detail becomes a piece of a vast mosaic, perceptible on multiple levels. A marvelous group.
Miro Quartet
By Joe Banno, The Washington Post, Sunday, April 12, 2010
Saturday's recital by the Miro Quartet at Dumbarton Church started off with a jolt of electricity. Beethoven's early C-Minor String Quartet, Op. 18, No. 4, certainly provides opportunities for drama. But the Miro players paid particular attention to the work's dark undercurrents, digging into its jabbing accents with a thrilling fervor and taking a full-blooded, freely rhapsodic approach to the score's more restrained passages.
Those same qualities resurfaced after intermission, in white-hot traversals of movements from Mendelssohn and Schubert string quartets. Those two movements were actually part of an "a la carte menu" ballot that audience members were asked to vote on to create the second half of the program. Needless to say, traditional composers trumped the likes of Charles Ives and a newly commissioned work by Kevin Puts in the voters' eyes. But the schmaltzy arrangement of Kern's "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" was a guilty pleasure for "dessert."
The world premiere of Quartet No. 4, by 21-year-old Indiana University biochemistry student Tudor Dominik Maican -- a composing prodigy from the age of 5, with six symphonies and a raft of commissions under his belt -- was passionately performed by the Miro. Its patchwork of received ideas (think Tchaikovsky in sentimental mode, crossed with the overheated chromaticism of Schoenberg's "Verklarte Nacht") was hardly fresh-sounding. But the writing was unfailingly attractive, with well-turned melodic material and an engaging, all-pizzicato middle movement that would serve any quartet well as an encore piece.