Wigmore Hall
James Clarke – String Quartet
no.1 (2002-3)
Hans Abrahmsen – Quartet no.4
(2012, United Kingdom premiere)Rebecca Saunders – Fletch (2012, United Kingdom premiere)
Wolfgang Rihm – String Quartet no.13 (2011)
Irvine Arditti
and Ashot Sarkissjan (violins)
Ralf Ehlers (viola)
Lucas Fels (cello)
Ralf Ehlers (viola)
Lucas Fels (cello)
Hurricane Sandy necessitated
alterations to the programme of this concert. The New York-based JACK Quartet’s
absence entailed postponement of the British premieres of James Clarke’s 2012-S for two string quartets and Mauro
Lanza’s Der
Kampf zwischen Karneval und Fasten for octet. In their place
came Clarke’s first string quartet and Wolfgang Rihm’s thirteenth. Two British
premieres, then, rather than four, but all the works were new to me, and Clarke’s
work was the outlier in being almost a decade old.
Its arresting opening proved
typically uncompromising in its violence. Considerable use is made of
glissandi, post-Xenakis buzzing, glassy harmonics: but this is no mere
catalogue of effects. Themes, if I may call them that, or motifs are flung
between the four parts with visceral abandon – as they were in the Arditti
Quartet’s commanding performance. Dogged insistence and something akin to
variation were revealed as two sides of the same coin, a ‘duet’ between two
violins almost beguiling, likewise its successor for viola and cello. And yes,
this ultimately proved conversational in a quartet tradition one might trace
back to its founder, Haydn.
Hans Abrahamsen’s fourth
string quartet was commissioned in 2010 but took twenty years to write. I wish
I could say I thought it worth the wait. Again, there is an arresting opening:
high solo first violin harmonics intoning a chorale-like tune. Joined by the
second violin, then the viola, and then very briefly the cello, all using
harmonics, the process is repeated. A second hearing, then, though of course in
knowledge of what has passed before. I was intrigued by dim echoes of Bartók
and perhaps even the viol consort in the opening of the second movement, before
it settled down into a quasi-minimalist mode of expression whose mild motor
rhythms and tonal harmony sounded more suited to a television film score than a
stand-alone concert piece. The third movement consciously echoes the first, or
rather mirrors it, opening with a cello pizzicato solo passage, joined by viola
(again pizzicato), and so on upwards, rounded off, again very briefly, with an
utterance sul ponticello by the first
violin. The process, again, is repeated. Likewise the fourth movement echoed
the second, apparently ‘planned,’ according to the composer, ‘as a dark and
heavy counterpart but it turned out to be like “babbling” music of a child’.
Though I clearly was not on Abrahamsen’s wavelength, there could be no faulting
the response of the Arditti players, as committed here as elsewhere.
Rebecca Saunders’s Fletch concluded the first half in what
sounded to me far more typical Arditti territory. In the composer’s words:
Fletch, n. (archery); the feather placed on the arrow, providing it with the capacity of flight; the feathered vane towards the back of the arrow, used to stabilise during flight. Fletch is a furious ongoing exploration of a specific physical gesture and fragment of sound.
The physical quality of tone was vividly, viscerally communicated in work and performance. Glissandi, rapid crescendo, trills, and more combined to far more than the sum of their parts, betokening a fascinating exploration of the instruments and their capabilities as much as performing techniques. There was on a first hearing a satisfying formal arc, or perhaps better progression, which put me in mind – how or why, I cannot quite explain – of a neo-Lisztian symphonic poem. It was an instinctive reaction, doubtless, but perhaps that was in keeping with the physical immediacy of the piece.
