Philomusica quartet revives fascinating Bridge composition
Players present engaging program
Milwaukee’s Philomusica String Quartet took the stage at Wisconsin Lutheran College Monday evening with an engaging program of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Bridge.
Bridge, you say? Frank Bridge, a British violist, composer and conductor, was one of Benjamin Britten’s teachers.
Philomusica played Bridge’s “Novelletten” for String Quartet, a fascinating early work. Nested in the middle of the evening’s program, it was written as three, relatively brief, independent pieces for string quartet.
Violinists Jeanyi Kim and Alexander Mandl, violist Nathan Hackett and cellist Adrien Zitoun brought fascinating colors and textures to the foreground in their performance of the Bridge.
They opened with a haunting, lovely rendition of the piece’s first movement, if with a few early pitch issues, moving to a just-theatrical-enough take on the second movement, delivering it as a collection of juxtaposed vignettes. They brought constant momentum to a bold, evocative rendition of the final movement.
The concert opened with an intimate, thoughtful performance of Beethoven’s String Quartet in F, (based on his Piano Sonata, Op. 14, No. 1).
Beethoven, never short of opinions, wrote to his publisher about how he hated the practice of publishers arranging various composers’ piano music for string ensembles. He included his own arrangement of one of his piano sonatas.
Less intense, and more sparsely written than Beethoven’s 16, multi-movement string quartets, the piece came across the footlights Monday evening as an intimate, warm conversation between friends. A calmly introspective first movement gave way to a lovely, lilting performance of the second, and a delightfully animated, take on the final movement.
The biggest sounds of the evening closed the program, in a passionate performance of Tchaikovsky’s String Quartet No. 2 in F Major. This was wonderfully engrossing, heart-onthe-sleeve playing, from big, dense, ensemble passages to Kim’s soaring, solo lines.
The players reveled in the distinct character, shifting textures and emotional depth of the piece’s four movements. They pushed the final movement to the limit, pulling apart just a bit in the final bars.