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.

Edgar Meyer and Mike Marshall blow the barn doors off of CMNW

No more introduction is needed than this: on Thursday night July 3 at Kaul Auditorium  the world's (almost inarguably) greatest double bass player and one of its foremost mandolin stylists teamed up for a (mostly) two-man concert. Edgar Meyer and Mike Marshall delivered a program heavy on Americana in honor of our nation's holiday, and the product was every bit as good as one would expect.

Featuring a roving, constantly shifting set list--neither Marshall nor Meyer seemed entirely sure of what order they played their songs, nor indeed at times of what they actually played--these two roamed through old favorites and new original compositions. Opening with a hornpipe with scintillating mandolin over a peripatetic bass line, the duo warmed into it immediately and then really began to swing.  Meyer displayed every trick in the book: pizzicato bass lines in which he slapped strings with his fingers for percussive effect, drawn out sawing with his bow, and despite the technical fireworks his balance with Marshall was perfect--it would've been so easy for him do drown out the delicate filigree from Marshall's instrument, but his sense of unity was perfect.

The first set featured their own tunes called Green Slime and Pickles, a rhythmic yet oddly free-form piece centered around a deep blues theme on the mandolin. Another piece featured melancholy, moto perpetuo bass motives that switched in color and character--arco, pizzicato, arco--Meyer switched back and forth in between phrases while Marshall played a clean, sparkling descant over the deeps of Meyer's themes, as the two wandered in what strange and far-flung modal shores, personifying the metaphor of music as journey.

They switched to another tune, Meyer swinging and honking at the top of the fingerboard in an extremely funky root motive. Rhythmic solidarity between the two were the watchwords of the evening, which made the side-trips into polyrhythms all the more enjoyable.  Sitting there listening, I wondered what it would be like to attain such mastery over a medium as to have complete freedom to soar like an albatross over a shining sea. Lacking both the innate artistry and titanic discipline to achieve such heights, all I can do is dream indeed, but hearing a concert by virtuosi such as these was better than any dream.

In the second half, featuring more original compositions such as Flight of the Fly and Please Don't, they broke new ground, Meyer wailing away on rapidly shifting open fifths, like power chords on heavy metal guitar. They played a folk/Americana medley, with Whiskey Before Breakfast and The Middle Passage among the offerings. They were joined by Meyer's son George on the fiddle for Temperance Reel and other tunes. George Meyer and Marshall played some spectacularly precise and intricate doublings during this set. Marshall switched to the mandola for a tune called Looper, showing intricate melodic interplay between instruments as well as humrous stop tempos. They closed with an Appalachian-feeling tune called Early Morning, and finally with an unbelievably lively Bulgarian dance tune.

Chamber Music Northwest always brings incredible artists to Portland, but to say they outdid themselves last Thursday night would be an understatement. It was a joy to hear such artistry, and to see two such masters who still, after all is said and done, seem not to take themselves too seriously. It seemed that for them this music was about having fun and being alive, and if music isn't good for that then I quit.