By Frank Housh
(This review first appeared in The Media Room)
Above photo: The Chiaroscuro String Quartet, Nov. 5, 2024, at the Mary Seaton Room, Kleinhans Music Hall. © Frank Housh

The Chiaroscuro String Quartet concluded its North American tour with an Election Night concert that matched the drama of the moment. The Quartet’s personnel, the concert’s program, and the ensemble’s discography are at the bottom of this review.

A capacity audience of approximately 700 filled Kleinhans Music Hall’s Mary Seaton Room (Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024) for the second concert in the Buffalo Chamber Music Society’s 101st season (it doesn’t look a day over a century).

Henry Purcell and The English Baroque

The concert began with three “Fantasias” by English Baroque composer Henry Purcell, a compositional form that predated the string quartet and were written for the viol family, the immediate evolutionary ancestor of the violin, viola, cello, and bass.

Never intended for publication and performance, Purcell’s wrote his 15 Fantasias in the summer of 1680 as exercises in the emerging style of “common tonal music” period. This is the musical “key” system that replaced Medieval plainchant and continued through the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods as Western music’s primary musical vocabulary.

The Chiaroscuro filled the hall with Purcell’s rich counterpoint, weaving the intricate lines that were a precursor to J.S. Bach and the fugue.

The Quartet seemed to approach the Fantasias with an “historically informed approach” faithful to Early Baroque performance style; the meandering musical lines created a single, hypnotic sound whose appeal is undiminished over four centuries.

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Setting: July 5, 1809, Vienna.

Napoleon’s First Empire is at its height but fighting on two fronts: a “peninsular war” on the Iberian Peninsula against Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom, and a second front in Central Europe against Austria.

During the Battle of Wagram, Vienna was battered with a brutal, unrelenting artillery barrage. The stalwart Viennese citizens who remained in the great city during the siege included one Ludwig Van Beethoven who had abandoned his studio to take refuge in a cellar with his brother Carl, at one point covering his ears with pillows to protect his degenerating hearing.

The trauma of the shelling (and later occupation) of Vienna affected Beethoven deeply; he recalled “nothing but drums, cannons, men, misery of all sorts,” admitting “it affected me body and soul.”

Beethoven wrote his “Serioso” Quartet, String Quartet F minor in 1810 in the wake of this trauma while he was also writing incidental music for a revival of Goethe’s play “Egmont” (the Overture to Egmont was the very first composition performed on November 7, 1935 by the recently formed Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. The BPO will reprise that performance in celebration of the BPO’s 90th anniversary on Saturday, November 9, 2024. Click here for more information.)

Just as Purcell wrote his Fantasias as a compositional exercise, Beethoven made clear in a letter he wrote the Serioso “for a small circle of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public.” This is likely because it included experimental compositional techniques, structural irregularities, and rhythmic disruptions.

The ensemble masterfully executed the Serioso’s frequent, sudden changes in tempo, melodic range, and mood while retaining its distinct ensemble sound throughout the short but highly demanding composition.

The Chiaroscuro displayed its valuable experience with Beethoven, having recorded many of his 16 quartets, including the Serioso, in 2013 (listen here).

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The Dance of Death

Schubert was dying in 1824 when he wrote “Death and the Maiden,” String Quartet in D minor, D.810. This was clearly on his mind as he composed his Quartet No. 14, named after one of his earlier songs, “Death and The Maiden” (D. 531 Opus 7 No, 3, 1817). In the story, death unexpectedly coming for a young woman who issues a musical cri du coeur. She sings:

The Maiden:
Pass me by! Oh, pass me by!
Go, fierce man of bones!
I am still young! Go, dear,
And do not touch me.
And do not touch me.

The cold hand of death will not be denied, however, and takes her while calling himself protector:

Death:
Give me your hand, you beautiful and tender form!
I am a friend, and come not to punish.
Be of good cheer! I am not fierce,
Softly shall you sleep in my arms!

Like the Serioso, the quartet is filled with sudden tempo shifts and complex harmonies. The ensemble maintained its unison sound from the first movement’s mediation on death to the whirling, concluding “dance with death” tarantella that brought the audience to its feet.

You can listen to the Chiaroscuro Quartet’s 2005 performance of Death and the Maiden at Wigmore Hall, London below (32:15-1:19:12).

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It only took a century, but the secret is out that the Buffalo Chamber Music Society produces some of the finest music in our community.

The Chiaroscuro lived up to its name, brilliantly shifting from vivacious melody, velvet harmony and frenzied virtuosity in a brilliant performance.

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The Chiaroscuro String Quartet consists of Alina Ibragimova (violin), Charlotte Soluste-Bridoux (violin), Emilie Hörnlund (viola), and Claire Thirion (cello).

Program by the Chiaroscuro String Quartet, 7:30PM, November 5, 2024 in the Mary Seaton Room at Kleinhans Music Hall, Buffalo New York: (1) Fantasia No. 7 (Z.738), Fantasia No. 8 (Z.739), and Fantasia No. 11 in G Major, all by Henry Purcell; (2) String Quartet in F minor, Op. 95 (“Quartetto Serioso”) by Ludwig Van Beethoven; (3) String Quartet in D minor, D. 810 (“Death and the Maiden”) by Franz Schubert.

For a complete Chiaroscuro String Quartet discography please click here.

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By Frank Housh · Launched 4 years ago
Captivating writing about the arts and current events from a former classical musician, civil rights attorney, and law professor.