The St. Lawrence String Quartet (from left): Lesley Robertson, Christopher Costanza, Geoff Nuttall, and Scott St. John.
(Anthony Parmelee)
Music Review
How many personnel changes can a string quartet endure while preserving its essential identity? The question came to mind on Sunday afternoon as the St. Lawrence Quartet took the stage of Jordan Hall for its first local performance with its current roster. Any doubts were assuaged by the forceful, nuanced, and well-grounded reading of Beethoven's Quartet (Op. 130) that closed the program.
The newest member is Scott St. John, who replaced second violinist Barry Shiffman. But the change runs deeper than the switch of an inner voice, as the St. Lawrence has also seemingly transitioned to an Emerson Quartet-style rotation model, in which St. John and Geoff Nuttall now switch off on first violin. St. John is a fine player with a concurrent career as a soloist, so there's no fear of a dip in overall quality, but Nuttall is a tough act to follow in the departments of sheer charisma and excitability. With St. John on first violin in Sunday's Beethoven, the group sounded slightly more polished but also less energetically explosive than when I last heard the ensemble in an earlier configuration. That said, Sunday's reading of Beethoven's epic "Grosse Fuge" covered all the bases, with technically distinguished playing, interpretive insights, and all the edge-of-the-seat intensity you could ask for.
If only the first half of the program had matched these qualities. The big event was the local premiere of Roberto Sierra's "Songs from the Diaspora," written for soprano and piano quintet and commissioned by a consortium of organizations that includes
Sierra's piece is a song cycle based on traditional Sephardic texts and melodic fragments that the composer chose for the way they evoked aspects of the diaspora experience in the wake of the expulsion of Spanish Jews in 1492. It amounts to seven attractively conceived and colorfully scored songs, full of melodically generous writing, but they are not individually distinct enough or sufficiently reimagined to land with much impact on first hearing. Some of the vocal writing invited comparison to Osvaldo Golijov's Mediterranean song cycle "Ayre," but without that work's bold reinvention of its materials.
Since the quartet was traveling with a vocal soloist, the decision was apparently made to build the entire first half around her, with mixed results. The concert opened with an under-characterized reading of Ernest Chausson's luxurious "Chanson Perpétuelle," scored for the same forces as the Sierra work, and a set of four Schubert songs that seemed to break up the organic unity of the program altogether. Murphy sang throughout with a beautifully pure-voiced if slightly monochromatic soprano. She was at her best in Schubert's "Litanei auf das Fest aller Seelen," sung with a gentle, quiet radiance. Kevin Murphy supported her ably on the piano but with very frontal playing that missed opportunities for inflection and atmosphere. Even with its appealing moments, the Schubert set never really justified benching the excellent St. Lawrence players, who come through town all too rarely. The richness of their closing Beethoven made one wish they had a bigger share of this program's spotlight.
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