Just outside Herbst Theater on this morning of the Ides of March, a huge
peace demonstration unfolded, in an atmosphere of palpable helplessness
and anger.

Inside, the Alexander String Quartet performed Dmitri Shostakovich's
last quartet (No.  15, from 1974), and the quartet's violist, Paul
Yarbrough, with pianist Aglika Angelova, played the Viola Sonata from
1975, completed two months before the composer's death.  The two works
are characterized by feelings of the ultimate sadness, the final loss,
yielding to acceptance.

It was not a happy concert - or day - but at least, the sublime beauty
of the music created an experience to remember and, in some ways, treasure.

Musicologist Robert Greenberg, who completed a San Francisco Performances
three-year retrospective of Shostakovich's chamber music with this
concert, made no reference to a possible connection between the morning's
events inside and outside of the War Memorial.  He didn't have to.

He spoke of the deep malaise in the music reflecting not only the
composer's many neuroses and the extent of his physical illness, but
also a lifetime spent in a repressive society, where the individual is
powerless.  Greenberg didn't have to spell out the similarity between
the uncomprehending sorrow within and the intense frustration without,
on the street.  However unreal, the day's reality increased the music's
intensity; the music, in turn, acted as a kind of narcotic or, more
positively, an agent of assuagement.

Helplessness, Greenberg mentioned several times, was a feeling the
composer frequently dealt with, often saying that "we [humanity] are all
marionettes."

To avoid an unlikely, but possible misunderstanding: the parallel is of
atmospheres, not between the repression of Shostakovich's totalitarian
society and the current surreal chaos that is ours.  I spent years in
the composer's world, so I could not possibly compare facts between That
and This, I am only registering an observation about the similarity of
moods, ours so much more intense exactly because the feeling of helplessness
is unprecedented.

Although the Viola Sonata is Shostakovich's last work, it is the String
Quartet No.  15 that feels more like a farewell, the final word.  With
"Elegy," "Nocturne" and "Funeral March" among the titles of the six
connected movements, No.  15 is slow, quiet and sad in an unrelieved,
but not morbid - and certainly not mawkish - manner.

There is something zen or "trance-music" about the E-flat minor quartet,
and once you're in its "zone," time feels suspended.  It is 40 minutes
of a road you'd rather not take, but once on it, the journey is both
quiet and thrilling.  At the end, there is a sense of being spaced-out
or, for some, obtaining catharsis.

Virtuoso performances by first violinist Zakarias Grafilo and cellist
Sandy Wilson enhanced, rather than diminished the Alexander Quartet's
usual magnificent ensemble playing.  With second violinist Frederick
Lifsitz and violist Paul Yarbrough, the quartet is reliably simple,
unpretentious, effective - perhaps never more so than today.

The Viola Sonata is a complex and layered work and yet Shostakovich's
description of it as "bright, bright and clear" music is completely
accurate.  Greenberg also quoted Schnittke's verdict of "philosophical
lyricism," but that doesn't come near explaining the conflict-and-conversion
of complexity and simplicity.

The performers reflected the work's duality, unintentionally.  Angelova's
bright, strong playing at times came close to overwhelming Yarbrough's
warm and intimate sound, but the sonata's riches allowed for a less than
perfect balance.  The Bulgarian-born pianist (trained in Germany and now
a San Francisco resident) brings an occasionally steely, mostly powerful
and straightforward, no-nonsense approach to music, and for the Shostakovich
sonata, it was exactly right...  as was Yarbrough's lyricism.

Janos Gereben/SF
www.sfcv.org
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