Wednesday was to be the Boston debut of the Simón Bolívar String Quartet, but when that concert sold out the Celebrity Series added another concert for the evening before, on Tuesday. So I ended up seeing their second concert, and it wasn't really in Boston; both performances took place in Pickman Hall at the Longy School of Music on the fringe of Harvard Square, Cambridge.
The members of the quartet came up through el Sistema, a program in Venezuela that puts instruments in the hands of young children and fosters their classical music education. These four players are currently the principal chairs in the string section of the Simón Bolívar Orchestra (formerly Youth Orchestra, but its musicians grew up). As the recordings and videos of the orchestra demonstrate, el Sistema has produced some great results.
The evening began with Felix Mendelssohn's String Quartet No 2 in A minor. This work, written when the composer was seventeen, is a perfect calling card for prodigious, youthful musicians. The piece can handle athletic vigor or stripped-down transparency; there are any number of valid readings. The SBSQ played the first two movements with lyrical romanticism, which left me expecting delicate tenderness in the third movement. The tempo marking is Allegretto con moto (moving slightly fast), but it came across as 'pedaling wicked fast', about twice the tempo that the opening movements had prepared me for. They then slashed their way through the Presto of the fourth movement. My overall impression of the Mendelssohn was one of liberation. These players were not bound by any one playing tradition, but that freedom didn't make for a coherent whole.
The next work, Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera's String Quartet No 1, was made for slashing. The SBSQ reveled in the rhythmic percussiveness of the opening Allegro violento ed agitato and the following Vivacissimo (wicked lively), yet played appropriately Calmo e poetico in the third movement. That section opens with the cello, viola and second violin droning on the standard tuning notes of a guitar while the first violin explores various melodic tangents. The final Allegramente rustico got the audience's hearts and hands thumping.
After intermission we heard the final work, String Quartet in C minor by Johannes Brahms. Given the energized interpretation of the Mendelssohn, I was surprised by the placid understatement of the slow movement in the Brahms. As the concert entered its second hour I couldn't shake the image that the cello and lead violin sounded pudgy, like the instruments didn't fit easily into the notes they were supposed wear. There is a middle ground between reckless abandon and clinical precision, but the Simón Bolívar String Quartet has yet to find a convincing artistic voice.
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