Spirited.
That’s the adjective that repeatedly came to mind during the Brentano String Quartet concert Monday night. Opening the Dallas Chamber Music Society’s 80th season, at Southern Methodist University’s Caruth Auditorium, the program comprised quartets by Haydn, Mendelssohn and Britten.
With only one change of cellist since its 1992 founding, the Brentano displayed finely honed ensemble sensitivities as well as individual brilliance. There wasn’t a dull moment.
The foursome made an especially fetching case for Haydn’s G major Quartet (Op. 33, No. 5). They savored the music’s surprises — a Haydn signature — especially the almost operatic drama of the mysterious slow movement. But there was plenty of ebullience for the scherzo. The finale, a minuet in all but name, finally shed its courtly manners for an earthier romp.
Both here and in the Mendelssohn D major Quartet (Op. 44, No. 1), the two works bookending the concert, the music was boldly sculpted, its contrasts set in high relief. Just occasionally, a fortissimo bulged more aggressively than warranted by 18th- and early-19th-century musical manners.
The Mendelssohn’s first movement and conclusion of the finale sometimes got a little too gutsy, although, unlike too many chamber ensembles these days, the Brentano never lost control of tone and tuning. Lyrical music was gracefully handled, and the middle-movement minuet lilted nicely. There was a rousing ovation at the end, but no encore. After a concert so well conceived and well played, none was needed.
Britten’s Second String Quartet, in C major (Op. 36), was the program’s challenging centerpiece. Composed in 1945, and thus contemporary with the great opera Peter Grimes, it fairly bristles with imagination.
The first movement opens with three instruments spinning octaves around a shifting fourth instrument’s drone. The music becomes more agitated and jerky, then retreats into something like Bartók’s “night music” movements. A kind of woozy dance is interrupted by gruff jerks. More gruff grunts punctuate the scurrying scherzo.
The finale is a gigantic chaconne (although Britten favored the old English spelling chacony), a set of variations on a theme in the bass. With stabbing accents, with much ado over short-long rhythms, Britten does a good job of camouflaging the theme. In turn, cello, viola and first violin get cadenza-like effusions.
I’m sorry that my attention was increasingly distracted by a young couple in front of me animatedly conversing and taking turns with a smartphone game. But the impassioned performance got loudly enthusiastic applause at the end.
In our age of ever shorter attention spans, I increasingly find printed program notes too long — so long that they dissuade rather than attract reading. Annotators sometimes seem determined to lay out all their knowledge and research.
Notes on these three pieces filled four and a third pages of tiny print, each paragraph comprising dozens of lines. Commentary on the Haydn worked in allusions to Kant and, rather extensively, Lewis Carroll.
Just tell us quickly what will help us get into the music, please.