Edgar Meyer shines bright with the Dover Quartet

Edgar Meyer

Monday July 22 saw the great contrabassist Edgar Meyer join the Dover Quartet for a spectacular performance going into the final week of the CMNW Summer Festival. The program featured works by Bach, Brahms and a composition of Meyer's own.

Sonata No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1027 (in this case played by Katie Hyun on violin, Camden Shaw cello and Edgar Meyer on contrabass) opened the everning. It was fascinating to hear the sonata without a continuo as one thinks of it, but with two independent melodic instruments forming the support for the violin.

Meyer found the most dulcet timbre imaginable on his intrument. All three performers were able to bring pitch-perfect accuracy to the most dissonant and abstruse harmonic developments, as surely as if it were a 3-voice fugue played on a clavier. Meyer's ceaselessly gentle yet insistent mezzo-staccato was a thing of beauty. In the finale the pizzicato from the bass was so delicately and intuitively phrased--the perfect symmetry and balance cannot be overstated.

The approachable complexity of the composition required that all three perform at an equally high level to properly realize it, and the result was elegant, energetic and indescribably lovely. Absolutely everything that is best and most beautiful about baroque chamber music was present in this small ensemble.

Meyer's String Quintet (1995) opened with a gossamer Appalachian reverie. Consisting of the Dover Quartet plus Meyer, the texture was incredibly full-throated while still being gentle.  As the movement morphed into a more somber rallentando, Meyer sawed away in what could only be described as a rally into a hoe-down, and the group thundered together in primitive chordal phrases.

The second movement started as a funky blues tune, with both bass and cello having at it. Eerie sul ponticello wails from the violins presented a disturbing emotional counterpoint to the grooviness going on elsewhere. At one point Meyer had the bass neighing like a horse. The quirky, personalized nature of the composition was always present.

 In the third, viola and cello played in chilling unison while strange, warped glissandi from the bass interrupted the plaintive monodic somnolence. The finale began with ceaseless trills and tremolandi, while ominous, syncopated pedal point grumbling from Meyer lay underneath. The entire work seemed, from a technical standpoint, a loving and intensely fascinating study into the textures and effects of a string ensemble employing jazz, blues and bluegrass idioms.

Brahms String Quintet in G Major, Op 3, formed the second half of the evening. This time it was the Dover Quartet plus Paul Neubauer on the extra viola. The glorious sawing from Shaw on his cello was accompanied by a strident molto vibrato from all, forming a vision of pure fire and passion. Mysterious and subdued, the players all carefully held back in the second movement, lending a feeling of quiet tension, like a coiled spring. The poco allegretto played like a grandiose serenade. It is fascinating how the addition of one more bowed instrument, of whatever kind, transforms the sonic possibilities of a string quartet from a chamber ensemble to that of what is essentially a small string orchestra. The amazing ensemble playing displayed a deep and intimate understanding not only of how he or she could sound, but of how they could and should sound. The Dover Quartet has never disappointed in all the times I've seen them, and this was no exception.

The Dover Quartet and David Shifrin deliver in an outstanding CMNW program

Richard Danielpour

Thursday July 14 at the Kaul Auditorium saw the kind of performance one expects from Chamber Music Northwest's Summer Festival: poised, professional, and artistically sublime. Featuring the Dover Quartet and David Shifrin on clarinet, and including a world premier by renowned composer Richard Danielpour, the program was varied and delightful.

The evening opened with Beethoven's String Quartet in E-flat Major ("Harp") Op. 74 with just the string quartet: Joel Link and Bryan Lee on violin, Milena Pajaro-van-de-Stadt viola, and Camden Shaw, cello. Immediately apparent was a rich and wonderful uniformity of pitch, timbre, and timing, highlighted by a marvelously deft 'code-switching' (to borrow a linguistic term) between the numerous pizzicato and arco motives as they were handed off between instruments. With a soaring sense of purpose, the young players achieved as fulsome a sound as one could hope to hear.

Moving into the Adagio the music became a seamless pulse, an ebb and flow like an earth tide almost imperceptibly shifting the ground beneath your feet. The group exhibited a justified self-assurance--the notes were so spot on and well-executed that all technical considerations were second-nature, and all could be devoted to a deeply thoughtful rendering of the spirit of the work. Shaw played the brief, ubiquitious half-measure-or-so exposed cello coda of the Allegretto sublimely, with the cooperation of the rest of the players who graciously stepped aside time and again so the charming subito pianissimo motive could be heard. Pajaro-van-de-Stadt's viola solo was affecting and direct, and the smooth handing off of pedal points between all four voices was great fun to hear.  I found myself given to involuntary smiles and chuckles for sheer delight, gloriously basking in this wonderful sea of sound.

Shifrin joined the group for the world premiere of Richard Danielpour's Clarinet Quintet, mysteriously subtitled by the composer "The Last Jew in Hamadan." The composer was on hand for the performance, and explained that his father was born in Hamadan, Iran, a city that once had a vibrant Jewish community (indeed it is reputed to be the burial place of the biblical Queen Esther) but was predicted by one writer to have only one Jew left in the city by the year 2020.

It opened with a sparking, culturally rich clarinet theme that cut through a charging agitato from the strings (Agitato con energia was the marking for the movement) with its rapid-fire melody and occasional squawks and honks. It was suggestive of a bustling, hurried life--perhaps unquiet but fascinating and lovely. Short, expressive phrases kept popping out here and there, Shifrin playing masterfully as always this ceaseless, frothing soundscape.

The Adagietto e triste began with a plaintive dirge from the clarinet over a hurdy-gurdy sound from the strings. Sinuous and melancholy--but somehow hopeful, not defeatist--it wound its way toward a fascinating tutti on one pitch, with the clarinet adding a daring color to the whole effect. Haunting doublings and dramatic seizures were hallmarks of the movement. It was a fine, original piece, and well worth a world premier at such a great festival.

The second half of the evening consisted entirely of the Clarinet Quintet in B-flat Major, Op. 34, by Carl Maria von Weber.  A liquid descending scale from the clarinet kicked it off.  There was a hilarious squawking high note delivered with what can only be described as comedic timing by Shifrin. A somewhat ungainly but not wholly unlovable first movement--what dramatic and contrasting stuff.

As the work moved on the group was able to make the most out of a work full of emotional moments but with a dearth of narrative cohesion--this would've been dull in lesser hands, but the skill of the musicians was such that they molded it into something worth hearing--a fine showcase for Shifrin that was capped off by a truly virtuosic finale.