twoquartets

Issue #44

Last Update March 2, 2006

Arts Dueling Quartets by David Katz Symphony Space, the venue for the arts on the Upper West Side, has a strong Winter-Spring lineup of musical offerings. On Friday, January 14, they presented a superb concert featuring two very different, yet equally accomplished, string quartets: the Ying Quartet and the Turtle Island String Quartet. In the first half of the program, the quartets alternated in showing off their individual strengths, the Ying with its polished, traditional classical style, and the Turtle Island group with its more modern, jazz and world-music inflected selections. The second half of the program combined these two groups into an octet: the “big band sound”, as they said.

The Ying quartet opened the program with Mendelssohn's Quartet in E-flat Major (Op. 44 No. 9). Their sound was rich and warm, their technical acuity superb. The risk for most string quartets is to allow the similar sonorities of their instruments to meld into a boring drone; the Yings avoided this by giving a small dynamic prominence to the cello, lifting the sound of the entire group and providing excitement to every movement. The rapid second and fourth movements (scherzo and molto allegro) showed the absolute control the Ying Quartet had over its instruments. Timothy Ying and Janet Ying, violins, and Phillip Ying, viola, were excellent. The cellist, David Ying, was outstanding.

The Turtle Island String Quartet had a dryer, crisper tone. Their contribution to the first half of the evening was a series of short jazz pieces, including Charles Mingus' “Fables of Faubus”. Most classically-trained ensembles sound stilted and awkward when playing jazz; they are reading it off the page, rather than playing from the gut. Not so Turtle Island. Their playing was light and natural, and would have passed muster in any jazz club in the city. The cellist, Mark Summer, made as fine a bass player as I have heard, even if his instrument was half the size. Also outstanding was the violist, Mads Tolling, with a great solo in a Pacquito D'Rivera Afro-Mexican tune, “Wapango”.

The second half of the program opened with Darius Milhaud's “La Creation du Monde”, Introduced as a composition that unites the classical and jazz worlds of the two quartets. Part Stravinsky and part Gershwin, this 1923 piece allowed each of the octet members to be heard to good advantage.

The remainder of the program consisted of works composed by members of the Turtle Island group: “Julie-O”, a charming solo cello confection originally written by Mark Summer for his sister, and here arranged for two cellos; “Mara's Garden of False Delights”, a suite in three movements by violinist David Balakrishnan, with each movement exhibiting a strikingly different mood; and “Variations on an Unoriginal Theme”, by violinist Evan Price, that pitted the Ying Quartet, playing classical selections, against the Turtle Island String Quartet, playing jazzy tunes, in a mock battle of the bands.

The audience, many of whom were attendees of the Chamber Music America annual conference, were enthusiastic about both groups, bringing them back for an encore, the last movement of the Mendelssohn Octet.

The Ying Quartet (www.ying4.com) is the Quartet in Residence at the Eastman School of Music, and was referred to by Isaiah Sheffer, Symphony Space's Artistic Director, as Symphony Space's resident string quartet. The Turtle Island String Quartet (www.tisq.com) originated in San Francisco and performs world-wide. These two groups have collaborated on a CD, to be released soon.

Symphony Space's February music offerings include such varied fare as Tom Chapin (Feb. 5), The Thalia Follies, a satirical political cabaret (Feb. 8 and 15), Music and Dance of Central Asia (Feb. 19), Loser's Lounge Sings Classical Sesame Street (Feb. 26), Jentsch Group Large, a 16 piece jazz ensemble (Feb. 27), and many others.

Symphony Space (www.symphonyspace.org) is located at 95^th Street and Broadway. Telephone 212 864-5400.