Beijing String Quartet - Mozart in D Major K 499 / Beethoven E Flat Op 127
After a time being cheated by local cab drivers and taken for a fool by
every vendor on the street, the travel hungers for two things. The first is
to get past the bitter rind of come ons and surface and get to the sweet
center of the city. And the second is a bit of revenge. Perhaps revenge is
too strong a word. But so it is.
The second finally came: the Beijing Metro is clean, quick, cheap - and
unfinished. Tianamen Square West is the last stop on the one line coming
from the west, and one must go up and walk over West Bridge to get to the
rest of the line - or take the circle all of the way around the other way.
Since the foreign tourist is used to asking stupid questions, and staring
blankly as the ticket handler explains four or five times, the tourist will
know this if he has any sense at all. This, and the easiest way to identify
a Beijing native is to realise that if you don't understand something the
first time, they will assume that you will - if they speak it faster and
with a thicker accent. The domestic toursit will look at the map, not see
anything to indicate the break in the line, and will often not know, since
the signs which indicate it are very small.
The Beijing music hall is near enough to Tianamen Xi to walk there, go down
the steps, pay ones ticket, and wait for a train. Though there are subtle
clues tha this is the last stop, such as the lack of a direction arrow for
the next stop, without fail several people will be hunched over their
tourist maps, and not look up. One will board, and try, in ones pathetic
bits of chinese, to say this is the last stop. The domestic tourist,
assuming the foreigner is slightly more intelligent than a pack mule, and
somewhat less informed as to the way between two points, will look up, look
at the station sign, and go back to reading the map. Only when the doors
close and the train lurches in the wrong direction does a look of surprise
and realisation hit their face. Then one can explain, in English generally,
that that Tianamen Xi is not, yet, connected to Xidan and they have to go
out and switch trains. Thankfully this annoyance should be ending soon, and
it is the authors sincere wish that this information will be obsolete by
the time anyone else has use of it.
- - -
The Beijing String Quartet's obscurity is also something which is a matter
of fact, which one cannot tell from reading their press releases, and
which, hopefully, will be obsolete by the time anyone else sees one of
their concerts.
Some quartets rely on virtuosoity of some member, others on a unique
repertory or approach. Some quartets are more quarrel than quartet, where
others are peaceful democracies. The Beijing Quartet is the creation of one
man, and it is his thinking on playing and style which dominate the group
and its approach. The program - of Mozart's D Minor and Beethoven's second
Eb Major- are the first documents in what is clearly a well thought out
program of how to approach the classical sonata form.
His approach to Mozart is simply stated as: tear the old boy's wig off.
There is none of the prettification which is the approach of Sir Neville
Mariner, there is none of the lightly bowed sunday brunch sweetness.
Instead there was a consistent search for more accentuated chordal
progressions, strong spiccato, and sharp attacks over legato. It was,
perhaps, not a performance that Mozart would have approved of in front of
his father. But it was, perhaps, a performance which suited the tenor of
the Germany which would rediscover his works.
The opening of the quartet is a declaration of war against sweetness, with
its strident first statement, and the purely straightforward statement of a
chord progression which, while he would have indulged in the chords at 16,
only the adult Mozart would have fused his natural love of rich vocabulary
with the more learned taste for integrated logic. Padre Martini would
smile at the correctly, and strategically, placed implied modulation - I
say this because the model for it comes from lessons which Mozart took with
him.
While one could go in depth into the reasons for the effect, the effect of
the quartet's chosen approach is to make this quartet sound like it was
written by Schubert. The basis for this is the crisp articulation of the
bass rhythm, and the way the phrases of the upper instruments trace full,
complete arcs, rather than emphasizing the basic units out of which Mozart
wrote all of his music. By joining these basic fragments together, and
carefully dividing them at the points of articulation - it avoids the
smooth Vivaldi-esque sheen which so many musicians choose for this composer.
I realise that all of that is a bit too densely worded - let me expand.
Mozart used fragmentary two and three measure units. He knew hundreds of
them, invented a good fraction of the ones he knew, and recombined them in
a bewildering variety of ways. But, their number, while large, is not
infinite, and his combinations, in many cases, are easy enough to read.
Henc the experienced Mozart listener will know what is to happen in most
Mozart works before it does. This is to be expected of a composer who had
to sing for his supper - often. And had musicians who would not practice
one work for long. On this level he was simply the most skilled and varied
of court composers of the age of court composers - which was at its peak
roughly from 1750 through 1800 - with a deeper bag of tricks and a more
clever approach to unifying them. He would still be a stapple of commuting
hour classical radio if he had been no more than this.
However this method was merely the starting point for a much deeper musical
logic. First Mozart had learned the importance of complexity of the bass
melody. This complexity is often ditched in an effort to make his music
easier on the ears, and sweeter. The jumping turning bass line that
underpins many of his compositions is crucial to the most sophisticated of
his works - and it is something which he endlessly taught his students to
make part of their basic approach to any harmonisation, no matter how
simple. Even his worst students were exposed to this technique, and were
expected to learn, or face the music of invective.
Second Mozart could take these individual fragments, which were plastic as
the stood, and combine them into large sections by expansion. They were
like tinkertoys, with he always knowing exactly where he could pull apart
the whole structure and insert a series of fragments, and leave the
impression of seemlessness.
To prettify Mozart is to focus either on the prettiness of his harmonic
turns - and Mozart was, from a young age, capable of astonishing chordal
turns - and to level out the structure, so that the impression left on the
listener is one of an endless stream of aesthetically pleasing moments.
There is nothing wrong in this of itself. Indeed, it is how some of the
works ought to be played. But it does not capture the other side of the
musical personality sufficently.
This other side is seen by emphasizig the discontinuity within the phrases
- at the ceasurea break, by accentuating each turn differently based on
its place in the large scheme, and, above all, by differentiating the
beginnings and endings of units. Homogenisation rounds off every period
equally, where as differentiation recognises that some are much more final
than others, some indeed should almost hang in the air, with a question as
to whether they have indeed resolved.
The BSQ has adopted the approach of using very strong bowing, with very
Russian style "power legato" and moderately thick tone - to unify, and also
to observe naturally the rounding of the phrases. After all, if one selects
a bowing pattern which ends strongly, then the phrase ends strongly. Pull
across rather than down, and the phrase ends more weakly. Thus what seems
like a complex forest of decisions boils down to a simple series of
gestures, some go down, others go across, some turn in the middle. The mind
commands, the arm obeys, and practice makes the whole process habit.
This may seem a very long introduction to get to what is a simple point.
Watching a group which has prettied up Mozart is almost like watching a
metronome - strokes of almost the same size and to almost the same position
each time. Back and forth, even, restful to the eyes and the ears. It is
like watching a dignified parade in some sense. The stroke in one direction
sounds the same as the other. Tick followed and following tock.
Watching the Beijing Quartet play is far more akin to a fast paced grass
court Wimbeldon match, with sharp turns, slick slides and constant motion
to varied stations of the court - a short jab for a volley here, a long
bassline rally that holds attention in the center, ended with a long
powerful downstroke that smashes to a conclusion. It is not "unpredictable"
as much - because there is an inner logic - as it is varied and responsive,
each phrase is not merely itself, but must leave the bow in the correct
position for the next phrase. This leaves each phrase tinged with what came
before, and makes it end in preparation for what must come afterward. It
also means that there are no long artificial pauses where phrases join
inequitably, and the even bower must shift, even if every so slightly.
Instead these parts turn from one to another, in the same way a tennis
player will feel a slight gap in the return, and be able to set himself for
a powerful forehand.
What came clear in critical moments - such as the handling of the eight
note figures through the first movement and the rhythmically delicate
opening of the Adagio - was that the Beijing Quartet has chosen extremely
well in almost all of the play. There were precise shifts of direction by
the second violin, slightly wavering of tempo to bring out expressiveness
in the Adagio, and in all of the numerous places where Mozart wants
expression to shift mercurially, the bows were correctly positioned to make
this shift seem like the change in lilt in a person's voice.
This manner, as hinted before, underlined the connection to Schubert,
particularly his Death and the Maiden Quartet. Unison passages strong and
strident, and the more complex the polyphony, the more a single singing
voice emerged from the texture.
- - -
Having spent a good deal of time praising the Mozart, moving to the
Beethoven is a murkier picture. Here there were more choices, and not all
of them were as surely made. Several etheral figures seemed disjointed from
what came before or after, rather than being a memory or apparition which
seems essentially normal, even if fantastical.
This is not to say there were lapses - at no moment was an outright error
made in ensemble, intonation or phrasing. But instead, there were errors of
strategy, sections which did not yeild to each other, chords which did not
feel the pull of the closing cadence. Through out was the rich - but not
greasy - string tone which the quartet cultivates, and through out we were
never given character of Beethoven - no loud storming about for its own
sake, no excessive roughness to stamp a point which could not be made by
more subtle means.
The conception of the work was also murkier, where we to believe that the
harmony diverged from structure? It seemed harder to believe. To argue for
fragmentation in Beethoven is to find the jagged edges of his melodies and
see how the rip through the measure lines and periods. This, to be done,
requires that the instrument taking up the new idea be prepared to change
the style of his bowing first. There were no sure signs of this.
Instead this quartet came across like a person illuminated by torchlight,
and walking towards us in the distance. The shadows are excessive in
places, and the whole form seems to waver. We know who it is, but we have
not yet had the startling shock of recognition.
- - -
The missive hopes to find hands who can move other instruments - and open
invitiations to the Beijing String Quartet to play in the west. Their
Mozart playing alone is enough to shame many of the better names which
currently haunt many small concert halls, and it seems very likely that
with more shaping and smithing, that the Beethovens will, sooner rather
than later, be crafted in to pieces of similar kind - each line is
delicate, but so interwoven as to produce a strength that is able to bear
the gems upon it.
Stirling Newberry
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