The blog is going away but the reviews are not. You can find them here in the online print edition.
Home > ATLarts > Archives > 2008 > September > 20 > Entry
Daedalus Quartet Opens Spivey Season
CONCERT REVIEW Daedalus Quartet. Saturday at Spivey Hall. www.spiveyhall.org.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The affair was never consummated, but for 11 sweet and agonizing years, she fired his creativity and his libido. Obsessed, he plunged instead into writing one masterpiece after another.
The true story of Czech composer Leos Janacek, who was 62 when he first spied the pudgy, cute, rather frumpy Kamila Stosslova, 25, is one of the great illicit tales in music history.
The affair was mostly one-sided — he wrote her hundreds of love letters — and inspired almost the whole of Janacek’s brilliant, emotion-scorched late period.
Raman Ramakrishnan, cellist of the Daedalus Quartet, retold this story before the group threw itself into Janacek’s “Intimate Letters” Quartet, written less than a year before the composer died in 1928.
It was the season-opening concert at Spivey Hall, the region’s most rewarding music venue. (As Ramakrishnan enthused, “This may be the most amazing hall we’ve ever played in — that includes [Amsterdam’s] Concertgebouw and [Vienna’s] Musikverein.”)
The Daedalus’ playing was thoroughly polished, with never a blemish of tone, never a rough edge — even in music, like the Janacek, that speaks most persuasively with a raspy whisper here or an irrational reply there. Real emotions are never so well coiffed.
They opened with a buoyant reading of Haydn’s G minor Quartet, Op. 20 No. 3, heavily understated and light on personality. I could have used more wit and shapeliness in the playing.
It might be because the four Daedalus members — with violinists Min-Young Kim and Kyu-Young Kim and violist Jessica Thompson — all trained at New York’s Juilliard School, where the string program is famous for a smoothness-trumps-interpretation aesthetic. That’s about what we heard Saturday. And with some full-body swaying and bows held overhead at the end of each movement, they looked more zesty and theatrical than they sounded.
To close, pianist Benjamin Hochman and double bassist Kurt Muroki joined the trio (Min-Young Kim sat out) for Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet — warm, lovely playing.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Classical Music
Comments
By Jay Howard
September 22, 2008 3:42 PM | Link to this
Pierre,
I searched high and low for you at Fringe on Saturday, but then I checked ajc.com and saw that you went to the Daedalus Quartet concert instead.
I think you got the better musical experience, by far. Unfortunately, this season at Fringe seems to be more about creating a club-like atmosphere than championing chamber music. (The strange thing is that most of the audience consisted of the “older than 40” crowd or the “younger than 10” demographic.)
Before the show, waitresses in pink wigs carried around trays of Mellow Mushroom food, and the DJ’s blend of light classical fare meets obnoxious trance music seemed more pretentious than usual. The documentary pieces introducing the music have also gotten way too long and a little too artsy for their own good.
At Fringe, creating a hipster vibe has become more important than the music.
By Matthew W.
September 25, 2008 11:57 PM | Link to this
I love how Daedalus Quartet plays, so full of energy.
My favorite piece they played was “Trout”, I have to agree with you very lovely playing. However I did enjoy the Intimate Letters while I follewed along with the score I had.
Semi-true to the comment about they looked more zesty then they sounded. O.k. after thinking long and hard, I really do get your point, but they were still respectively musically presentable.