Two young quartets and dreams of an ocean view
The Rockport Chamber Music Festival opened its 26th season on Thursday night with an impressionistic gaze into what it hopes will be its own future. Before a note was played, ushers handed out this summer's program book, with its cover given over to a soft-toned artist's rendering of an airy, spacious concert hall with expansive views of the ocean.
The hall does not yet exist; it is the new 325-seat, $17.5 million concert venue that the festival hopes to build in time for the summer season in 2009. Already $10 million has been raised and a site has been purchased. The festival has sought acoustical and architectural input from members of the team that worked on Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood. Let's hope plans proceed in a timely fashion, as the hall should clearly be a tremendous asset to both the festival and the local communities of the North Shore.
In the meantime, this summer's opening concert took place in the festival's adopted home, the galleries of the Rockport Art Association. Space is tight and sightlines are limited, but the sound is clear and bright. The festival's artistic director, pianist David Deveau, had a competing commitment with the Pops that prevented him from being present, but he left behind a well-balanced program boasting two dynamic young string quartets, the Daedalus and the Biava. Each played one Haydn quartet, and the two came together for a pair of large-ensemble works: the Two Pieces for String Octet by Shostakovich, and "Last Round," a tango-infused nonet by Osvaldo Golijov. Credit is due for resisting the more obvious choice of Mendelssohn's Octet, a much-loved yet over performed staple of gala festival concerts.
The Daedalus Quartet was founded in 2000 and quickly began adding honors and awards to its resume. In recent years, the group has cast a wide net in its repertoire -- a good way to maximize exposure -- presenting difficult or obscure quartets by Silvestre Revueltas, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and Elliott Carter. By contrast, Thursday's Haydn presented its own joys and perils. Haydn is of course the witty and well-tempered granddaddy of the quartet literature, but he is also a composer whose writing is so clear and revealing that playing the quartets is akin to an ensemble donning spandex -- there is nowhere to hide any flab.
In this case the Daedalus tackled the D major Quartet (Op. 20, No. 4) with confidence and a modest amount of flair. The group's warmly rounded sound is anchored from the bottom in the understatedly elegant and smooth tone of cellist Raman Ramakrishnan. Ensemble chords were dispatched with a powerful, almost Schubertian intensity, and the quartet's reading of the second movement stood out for its interpretive nuance, the way each variation suggested a distinctively tailored expressive vision.
The Biava Quartet was founded in 1998, and it has also notched its collective belt with competition prizes and a residency at the Yale School of Music, where its members served as teaching assistants to the Tokyo String Quartet. Some of the Tokyo's interpretive priorities -- its focus on transparency and razor-sharp precision in classical repertoire -- could be detected in the Biava's stylish traversal of Haydn's Quartet "The Joke" (Op. 33, No. 2). Austin Hartman plays a charismatic first violin, and the group's attack had ample crispness and energy. A widening of its sonic palette in terms of tonal color and shading would have taken this performance to the next level.
Both joint-ensemble works were a pleasure to hear, though the level of polish dipped noticeably, suggesting that double-quartet rehearsal time had been limited. The Shostakovich, a brash and exhilarating early piece, was ably dispatched. The Golijov is a loving tribute to the expressionistic tangos of Astor Piazzolla. Here, the two quartets and bassist John Feeney played with enthusiasm, but one wished for a deeper sense of the smoky and soulful tango style so brilliantly perfected by such string players as Fernando Suarez Paz, one of Piazzolla's frequent collaborators. Nevertheless, the audience ovation followed swiftly; the season continues through July 1.
Jeremy Eichler can be reached at jeichler@globe.com. 