The St. Lawrence String Quartet (from left): Lesley Robertson, Christopher Costanza, Geoff Nuttall, and Scott St. John.
(Anthony Parmelee)
Classical Notes
Geoff Nuttall, first violinist of the St. Lawrence String Quartet, had everything he needed when reached at his Philadelphia hotel room on Monday morning.
"I've got my coffee and I've got ESPN in the background," he said in a mellow, affable voice. Nuttall is a serious football fan, and having played an afternoon concert the day before, he'd missed most of the gridiron action, especially the matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants. "They embed a chip in your brain when you grow up in Texas," he joked, explaining his Cowboys fandom.
On Sunday, the St. Lawrence will team with soprano Heidi Grant Murphy and pianist Kevin Murphy at Jordan Hall for a concert that includes music of Chausson, Schubert, Roberto Sierra, and Beethoven. Perhaps because the concert will inconveniently nix his chances to see Dallas play the Redskins, Nuttall couldn't resist a sports-based reflection on life in a string quartet.
"You notice watching sports - 80,000 people [in a stadium], eight million viewers," he said. "And you do something you believe in for a pretty small audience. You think, this is so cool, we get to play this music that we do, hanging out with our friends. We've been lucky enough to sustain it and make a living for 18 years."
Somehow it seems strange that the St. Lawrence has been around that long. Something about the quartet's spirit retains the sense of being rebellious upstarts, whether it comes from Nuttall's sometimes dyed hair or the electric, almost improvisatory charge their playing carries. Or, as the violinist half-joked, "We look so young, I guess."
One feature of longevity, not necessarily a pleasant one, is personnel change, something the St. Lawrence has had its share of over the past several years. Marina Hoover, the group's original cellist, left the group in 2002. She was replaced by Alberto Parrini, who lasted only eight months. He was replaced by Christopher Costanza, the current cellist. Another founding member, second violinist Barry Shiffman, departed last year to become director of music programs at the Banff Centre, a Canadian cultural institution that Nuttall called "a place where we all grew up." His replacement is Scott St. John. This will be the quartet's first visit to Boston in its current configuration.
"Yeah, that's the challenge of a quartet. You have to keep reinventing yourself," Nuttall said when asked about the upheaval. "In our case the changes have been really good for us. When you have people that good joining the group, you miss the old guys, because they're your good buddies, but you also realize, holy cow, we could get better."
He praised what he called Costanza's rock-solid intonation: "I think he's played, like, six wrong notes in four years." As for St. John, whom Nuttall has known since childhood and whom he calls Scotty, "he's as good a violinist as I've ever been around - Josh Bell, [Pinchas] Zukerman, you name it. It's like playing with your more talented younger brother, sort of a weirdly positive experience."
Sunday's performance features the local premiere of Sierra's "Songs From the Diaspora," co-commissioned by
Then it's back to the road and the endless march of gigs that even the most prestigious chamber groups must follow. The St. Lawrence does most of its traveling in a minivan that carries the quartet members, their instruments, and the recently adopted baby daughter of violist Lesley Robertson. It's a sort of modern-day, high-culture version of the Partridge Family, Nuttall quipped. "I'm not sure how long these new guys are gonna last if they think this is how it is."
Information and tickets: 617-482-6661, celebrityseries.org
Speaking of quartets
Another excellent foursome is in the midst of a rare stateside visit. The Zehetmair Quartet, named for its outstanding first violinist, Thomas Zehetmair, is known for playing from memory while embracing under-appreciated modern repertoire. The ensemble's most recent recording, on ECM, pairs Bartok's Fifth Quartet and Hindemith's Fourth. The first few bars of the Bartok are a surprise: The quartet's sound has a lightness and transparency that set it apart from the earthier Takacs and Emerson quartets in this music. What makes this performance - as well as the Hindemith - so winning is the tremendous variety of attack and timbre that the quartet marshals, often at dizzying speeds and with precise intonation and focus.
The Zehetmair plays a free concert tonight at MIT's Killian Hall. The Hindemith is on the bill, as are Mozart and Schumann's moody A Minor Quartet (Op. 41, No.1). 617-253-2826, mit.edu/arts
Ross and 'The Rest'
Alex Ross, The New Yorker's stylishly intelligent music critic, stops by Cambridge's Harvard Book Store on Monday to give a lecture based on his superb new history of 20th-century music, "The Rest Is Noise." That's at 7 p.m., making it a close call whether you can still make it to Symphony Hall for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra an hour later. 617-661-1515, harvard.com
BSO online
The Boston Symphony Orchestra is venturing further into cyberspace. On its website, bso.org, it now offers video podcasts that include lectures, interviews, and concert footage. It has launched "Classical Companion," a regular multimedia feature including video and sound clips, interviews, and images. (The first installment contains background on Elliott Carter and an analysis of his Horn Concerto, which the orchestra is premiering this week.) BSO performances on Friday afternoons and Saturday evenings can also be heard streaming live on the websites of WGBH (wgbh.org) and WCRB (wcrb.com).
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