Review: Telegraph Quartet signals impeccable concert in Portland

Playing with superb dynamics, technique, and emotion, the Telegraph Quartet excelled in a demanding program Tuesday evening (January 23) at Lincoln Performance Hall. The ensemble scaled the heights and plumbed the depths of works by Beethoven, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, and Alban Berg, impressing a nearly fullhouse as part of the Friends of Chamber Music’s Classic Series.

Now in their 10th season, the Telegraph Quartet (violinists Erin Chin and Joseph Maile, violist Pei-Ling Lin, and cellist Jeremiah Shaw) is the Quartet-in-Residence at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Winners of the of the 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, the Telegraph Quartet, whose name perhaps was inspired by San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill, made a terrific impression in Portland a few years ago (just before the pandemic), and this return engagement was flat-out terrific.

Beethoven’s “Quartet No. 6 in B-flat Major” received a marvelous performance by the ensemble with outstandingly sculpted phrases from beginning to end. Crisp attacks and pinpoint exchanges added to the intensity of the performance. The third movement – with its sudden eruptions, followed by the first violin (Maile) blithely skipping around and then the entire ensemble digging in – was absolutely mesmerizing. The fourth movement switched between extreme melancholy, spiked with pensive outbursts, and playfully light sections – as if Beethoven couldn’t make up his mind – until he wrapped it up with a prestissimo finale.

In 1834, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel wrote “Quartet in E-flat Major,” which is the first string quartet ever written by a woman. The Telegraph Quartet, with Chin taking over the first violin position, gave it an outstanding performance. After an elegant and poignant first movement, things shifted into a higher gear in which all of the musicians showing fleet fingerwork. In the third fashioned a beguilingly slow build up that release a flowing cascade of sound, and Chin creating a sweet sound in the upper register – kind of like walking on a tight rope suspended very high above the ground. The final movement offered a fast dance-like sequence before launching into a furious section that culminated in a barnburner ending. The audience responded with an enthusiastic standing ovation.

The Telegraph Quartet gave an incisive interpretation of Alban Berg’s “Lyric Suite,” delving into the with fervent passion that reflected the enhanced emotional intensity of the piece, which was inspired by a long affair that Berg had with Hanna Fuchs-Robettin. Because of its 12-tone style, the “Lyric Suite” is not easily to grasp. Divided into six movements, it suggests a variety of moods that take listeners from the first moments of two people falling in love to the bittersweet ending in which their love cannot be realized in the way that they desire (Berg and Fuchs-Robettin were married to other people). The Telegraph Quartet played the piece with total commitment and the final Largo desolato conveyed a sense of emptiness and closed up with a note of resignation.

Not willing to leave listeners on a downer, the ensemble delivered an lovely encore, the second movement (Waltz) from Britten’s “Three Divertimenti for String Quartet.”

One of the unique aspects about the Telegraph Quartet, is its seating arrangement. All other quartets that I’ve seen seat the violins next to each other and the violist opposite the first violinist. The Telegraph Quartet places the violist next to the first violinist, and the second violinist seats opposite the first. From what I heard with the Telegraphers, their arrangement works just fine.

Bottomline, be on the lookout for the Telegraph Quartet. It’s a top-tier ensemble with a big future