Anonymous 4 sings goodbye
For nearly 30 years, the women of the vocal quartet Anonymous 4 have been enchanting audiences with the tonal purity and easeful elegance of their singing. On Sunday night, the group brought out those qualities again, and let everyone savor them one last time.
The group’s short, intimate concert in St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, presented by San Francisco Performances, was a farewell appearance, the last local installment in the ensemble’s final tour before disbanding. And perhaps more than anything, it was an opportunity to reflect on the wealth of musical delights the quartet has provided over the decades.
The name Anonymous 4 comes from the designation used for an important manuscript from the 13th century, and medieval music has always featured prominently in the group’s activities. But it’s been only one component in a wide repertoire that includes music of the Renaissance, hymns and carols from across the centuries, folk songs and new works written expressly for the ensemble — most recently and thrillingly, composer David Lang’s take on the Tristan legend, “Love Fail.”
All this music has been delivered with a trademark blend of ethereal, almost disembodied vocal tone and expressive urgency. The resulting performances, at their best, have boasted an unearthly beauty that still felt resolutely human.
If Sunday’s performance was not on that exalted level, it was largely because the repertoire on this occasion didn’t bring out the group’s most distinctive artistic virtues. The program, assembled to mark the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, consisted of hymns, gospel songs, sentimental ballads and instrumental tunes that had been popular around 1865.
For the most part, these are square-cut, formulaic ditties that unroll in neatly turned, repetitive quatrains, and although the singing of the quartet — Ruth Cunningham, Susan Hellauer, Marsha Genensky and Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek — was finely blended and often sweet, the songs wore out their welcome quickly. One or two of these, in a more varied context, can sound bewitchingly simple; a dozen or more in succession soon begin to pall.
Joining the group was the singer and multi-instrumentalist Bruce Molsky, who brought an entertainer’s swagger to the mix. He accompanied the quartet or delivered instrumental numbers on the fiddle, guitar and banjo, and threw some welcome grit into the smoothness of the proceedings.
The most arresting selection of the evening, in fact, was Molsky’s solo performance, accompanying himself on the fiddle, of “Brother Green,” a haunting lament by a dying Union soldier. Pious and sentimental though it may be, it unfolds in wonderfully irregular phrases and lurching melodic phrases, and Molsky gave it an irresistibly mournful cast.
There were other highlights as well dotted throughout the program, including Horner-Kwiatek’s soulful rendition of the ballad “Aura Lee” (whose melody was later recycled into “Love Me Tender”), Genensky and Molsky’s unaccompanied account of the old folk song “The True Lover’s Farewell,” and a truly luminous performance of the hymn “Abide With Me.”
But for the most part, the evening was less a rewarding musical experience than an occasion to bid adieu to a group of artists who have afforded us so much pleasure over the years. We’re going to miss them terribly.