Last Friday night, July 23rd, I heard the Kronos Quartet perform as a part
of Rutgers Summerfest at the Nicholas Auditorium on the Douglass College
campus.

Here is the program:

    1.  Anibal Trolio (arr. Osvaldo Golijov) / Responso
    2.  Carlos Paredes (arr. Osvaldo Golijov) / Romance No. 1
    3.  Hyo-shin Na / Kahk-seo-ree-ta-ryeung (Song of the Beggars)
    4.  Aleksandra Vrebalov / Panonia Boundless
    5.  Franghiz Ali-Zadeh / Oasis
    6.  Harry Partch (arr. Ben Johnston) / Two Studies on
        Ancient Greek Scales
    7.  John Cage (arr. Eric Salzman) / Totem Ancestor
    8.  Alfred Schnittke (arr. Kronos Quartet) / Collected Songs
        Where Every Verse is Filled with Grief

    Intermission

    9.  Philip Glass / work in progress
   10.  Alfred Schnittke / Quartet No. 2

I have mixed feelings about the performance.

First, the positive feelings.  I admire that the group commissions works
by little known composers.  I didn't really like the work by Hyo-shin Na.
It sounded much too dissonant for me.  The Vrebanov was excellent.  Born
in Yugoslavia, 29 year-old composer wrote the work when she was 27.  Based
on Gypsey songs, the work has a lot of fire and excitment.  The group
performed the Ali-Zadeh while accompanied in the beginning of the piece by
a tape of slowly dripping water.  Playing pizzicato (SP?) with the tape I
thought was pretty effective.

I liked especially Schnittke's Collected Songs.  David Harrington described
the Glass "work in progress" as the Dracula Quartet, because it was written
in 1998 to accompany the 1931 film version of Dracula.  Although, at this
point, I have moved away from Glass, his music always hits a certain spot
in me.  I enjoyed the work, although I felt it was a little too, shall we
say?, repetitive.  Schnittke's Quartet No.  2 was exhausting.

The not so positive feelings.  I was surprised when I entered the theater
to see how the stage was set up.  Everything was in black.  In the middle
were four seats on a raised platform.  The seats were completely covered in
cloth.  On either end of the stage were two speakers, one large and another
smaller one on top of it.  There were speakers at the back of the platform.
There were speakers on the platform.  In the seats all the way over from me
on the right was a large control panel, manned by several very long-haired
guys in black.  (Being follicly (SP?) challenged, I have a tendency to
notice things like a lot of hair on guys.) There were speakers on the
platform.  Hmmm, thinks I, so much for the quartet who only needs their
instruments, music, music stands and chairs to perform.  The group came
on stage to a nice reception, considering the relatively small audience.
There has been a personel change to the group.  In place of Joan Jeanrenaud
on cello, was Jennifer Culp.  The first thing they did was to plug their
instruments into amplifiers!  The entire concert was amplified.  Although
the group did not seem to distance itself from the audience in their
behavior, still I felt the amplification and the platform a bit of a
barrier.  It's as if the group wants to be known as THE Quartet of the New
Millenium!  The volume was so high during Schnittke's Collected songs it
sounded like a string symphony orchestra to me.  Oh, and there was also
special lighting on the wall behind the group during the performances.
Kind of distracting.

I knew I wasn't going to hear Haydn or Dvorak and I looked forward to
hearing new works.  I had no idea the group was so amplified.  Again, I
give them credit for promoting unknown talent.  Doing this is a positive
step, one that will keep CM healthy.  All of the aesthetic trappings tends,
for me, to take away from the interesting and moving music they are
playing.

Ron Chaplin