Music Review from The Columbus Dispatch

FOR THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Published: April 13, 2008
Edition: Home Final
Section: News
Page: 02A

When good a string quartet performs great quartet repertory, it's a good concert. Such was the case at the Southern Theatre last night, when the Berlin-based Artemis Quartet delivered enjoyable, even stunning performances of Beethoven, Thomas Larcher and Tchaikovsky.

Having received honors by the Beethoven-Haus Association, in Bonn, Germany, and the Echo Klassik "chamber music recording of the year" award, the Artemis Quartet may be on the way to securing a reputation as masters of the monumental quartets of Beethoven.

Last night's performance of Beethoven's Op. 18, No. 4 quartet was certainly good, but Beethoven requires more. Violinist Gregor Sigl needed a more lyrical sound, more expressive nuance and more consistent intonation. The second movement scherzo was elegant enough, but needed more direction. The main theme of the rondo-form finale needed more spark earlier to be engaging.

But the musicians brilliantly plumbed the depths of the ideas in Austrian composer Thomas Larcher's Quartet No.3: Mandares. The second movement, Honey from Anopolis, whose sustained pitch clusters were performed in rich, warm tones, proved that atonal music can be ravishing. The final movement, A Song from ?, dissipated the work's only melody through a series of high, almost pitchless repeated notes into the highest level of musical abstraction: silence.

The concert ended with Tchaikovsky's String Quartet No. 2 in F, Op. 22, a tonal work, though, oddly, almost as tuneless as Larcher's. Sigl and violinist Natalia Prischepenko traded places for this quartet, exposing Prischepenko's more engaging playing and dramatically improving the ensemble's sound. The musicians brought off all of the Gilded Age niceties Tchaikovsky is known for with grace and elegance, and galloped to the end with panache.

Reprinted with permission.