Queen Elizabeth Hall
Mozart – String Quartet no.14
in G major, KV 387
Janáček – String Quartet
no.2, ‘Intimate Letters’
Schubert – String Quartet in
D minor, D 810, ‘Death and the Maiden’
I wish I were not having to
write about this again, but not to mention what happened during the Jerusalem
Quartet’s performance of Mozart’s G major String Quartet, KV 387, would be as
bizarre as it would be dishonest. It inevitably coloured my response to both
the performance of that quartet and the rest of the concert. Once again,
protestors at a Jerusalem Quartet concert suddenly, shockingly disturbed
performance and listening, by standing up, in this case during the second
movement of the Mozart, to shout out their beliefs concerning the Quartet and
its relationship to the Israeli state. The players continued to play
throughout, which may or may not have been more shocking than if they had been
compelled to down their instruments for a while. Eventually, the protestors,
only two of them on this occasion, were led from the hall. Yet throughout the
rest of the concert, I was on edge – and I cannot think that I was the only
person to feel so – lest such an interruption occur again.
I am far from being someone
who, whether genuinely or otherwise, believes that somehow music and politics
do not mix. Indeed, I have spent a good part of my academic life arguing quite
the contrary. Yet I simply cannot bring myself to agree with what happened. I
should have nothing against protestors coming to the venue, handing out leaflets,
as I have seen them do elsewhere, engaging members of the audience in
discussion. However, violently to disrupt a concert in such fashion is, for one
thing, extremely unlikely to achieve anything to further their cause; if
anything, I should think it likely to turn some members of the audience against
it. Moreover, it is, especially if one is listening with the intent that such a
concert and such a programme demand, really quite disturbing, even frightening,
to experience such a disruption. Of course, no one in his right mind would say
that such an experience is in any sense comparable to what many Palestinians
suffer on a daily basis. But the players of the Jerusalem Quartet, whatever use
may be made of them by the Israeli state, are not simply to be equated with
that state, whatever proponents of a cultural boycott might claim. Moreover, it
is simply not the case that everyone in the audience is blithely sitting there,
unaware of such issues, unreflective and uncaring; one does not have the right
to force one’s own response to very difficult questions upon others. I can –
and do – respect the arguments that lead some to stay away; there might,
however, be more respect shown for those of us who have genuinely tried to
grapple with the arguments and who have decided, sometimes with doubts, upon
another course of action. It is certainly less than clear to me that, say,
British recipients of public cultural funding under New Labour, when the state,
much to the consternation of many of its citizens, invaded Afghanistan and
Iraq, should have been treated entirely differently.
Given that context, my
remarks on the performances will be relatively brief; shaken as I was by what
happened, I was not able to listen as I should have wished to. The players,
insofar as I could tell, offered an admirable performance of the Mozart
quartet. Tempi were apposite, permitting joy and melancholy to coexist, indeed
to interact, as they should. The first movement seemed, as befits the first of
Mozart’s ‘Haydn Quartets’, to take its lead from the elder composer, without
overlooking, whether here or later, the almost operatic sensibility that
infuses so much of Mozart’s œuvre. There may be Sturm und Drang in the conventional sense in the second movement,
but that was quite overshadowed by external events; the beauty of the players’
performance nevertheless remained, rendering the contrast all the more
disturbing – in all manner of ways. The slow movement was songful, almost
painfully so, yet again it is difficult for me to say more. I was perhaps less
convinced by the finale, in which I wondered whether some of the performance
strained a little too much towards emphasis of the ‘learned’ counterpoint,
rather than letting it speak for itself. But its general thrust was unarguable;
and again, given the circumstances, it is difficult to say more.
Janáček’s Intimate Letters received a scorching
performance; perhaps it scorched all the more in the light of what had
happened. The extraordinary opening lacked nothing in either modernistic
exploration or late Romantic passion. Some of the passages in harmonics, viola
and cello in particular, sounded almost as if they had come from thirty years
later, yet remained anchored in the composer’s own harmonic language. The ardent
quality, seemingly believing in every note, of the players’ response to the
entire performance had one listen as if it were given – and heard – in but a
single, extended breath. Folk rhythms were never mere folk rhythms; ‘effects’
were never mere effects. And the third movement’s climactic confrontation, so
clearly inspired by the composer’s love for Kamila Stösslová, yet equally
clearly rising above such particularity, proved duly shattering.
I am not sure I have heard a
more furious account of Schubert’s Death
and the Maiden Quartet, though I am not at all sure how much of that was
again a product of the circumstances, whether in performance or in listening.
If the first movement seemed, to begin with, to look towards Bruckner – I thought
in particular of the Ninth Symphony – then, as its workings became more
complex, it was increasingly Mahler who came to mind. Great care was taken both
to characterise each of the second movement’s individual variations, and yet to
give shape to the movement as a whole. If there were hope offered during the
turn to the major mode – and that is a big ‘if’ – then it was equivocal hope
indeed. A defiant scherzo was founded securely upon harmonic rhythm, as such
movements must be, to have their proper import. (Too often, one hears rhythm
but little harmony.) The Totentanz of
the final movement proved terrifying in any number of ways. I realise that such remarks are at best, excessively generalised, but hope that the reader will understand why, on this particular occasion, I am not able to say much more.
