The Record
Monday June 14, 2004

QuartetFest finishes with a flourish
By Colleen Johnston

Quartetfest 2004, a three-week concert series and intensive chamber music workshop, wound down this past weekend. Many events and clinics were presented, with Friday's Faculty Series concert being as fine and satisfying a chamber music performance as one could possibly expect.

At Maureen Forrester Hall the Penderecki String Quartet (resident quartet of Wilfrid Laurier University and core Quartetfest musicians) performed a blend of traditional repertoire and a brilliant new work by Academy-Award winning composer Tan Dun.

The Penderecki players - violinists Jeremy Bell and Jerzy Kaplanek, violist Christine Vlajk and cellist Simon Fryer - opened the program with Antonin Dvorak's ingenious 1879 "Slavic" String Quartet in E-Flat Major, Op. 51. A compelling composition, melding eastern-European folk elements with Dvorak's characteristic precision of contrapuntal craft, this work was impressively prepared.

No question, the Penderecki Quartet had gone over every phrase as laser surgeons. Finesse was heard throughout. Tuning, blending and dazzling rhythmic interplay overcame what could have been simply a self-conscious composition, in which there is innate melodic beauty, but much more development than most chamber ensembles would wish to have to lay awake at night pondering.

It turned out to be shimmering, from start to finish, due to the musicians' decisions to focus on the lyrical and at times frothy. Yes, Dvorak insisted on writing bold, almost intimidating lines for viola and cello, but the performance easily found an unusual balance in which everyone involved interpreted their parts as though they were linking arms.

In the same manner, Brahms Sextet No.I, in B-Flat Major, Op. 18, cries out for sensible and intelligent interpretation. Here is a work written by a young Brahms. The work is, to be blunt, episodic. Parts are in themselves great listening, but on the whole, the composition is as though he pasted odd bits together.

Faced with that, the quartet made the most of smoothing it into a surprisingly dynamic whole. From the autumnal opening Allegro, huge, gorgeous sonorities were produced. With the addition of cellist Paul Pulford and violist David Rose (guests of Quartetfest, along with pianist Heather Dawn Taves); many excellent dovetailing conversations of the Scherzo and Rondo sections took place.

Tan Dun, composer of the fascinating film score for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, in addition to his Oscar, has also won Musical America's composer of the year award. In Tan Dun's Eight Colours for String Quartet, a plethora of timbral and textural possibilities are investigated. Choking notes, vocalization techniques and even Buddhist chanting are aspects Tan Dun incorporated in this work. Characteristics he borrowed from the tradition of Peking Opera. The zen influence of eight miniatures ("the person who knows eight colours cannot see-the person who knows eight sounds cannot hear") is cleverly developed throughout.

The Penderecki performance was mesmerizing - intelligently timed, perfectly in tune, and a vivid contrast within a traditional program.

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