Walked over to the local auditorium to hear a string quartet

Ok, perhaps I should clarify: the local auditorium was the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress.  And the musicians of the Pacifica Quartet were playing a set of Stradivarius string instruments which are part of the Library's collection.  And the Librarian of Congress (director of the Library of Congress), Carla Hayden, introduced the concert, as it featured the Stradivarius instruments.

I was interested in the program because I knew some pieces and didn't know others.  A bonus of Library of Congress concerts is the display cases outside of the auditorium which feature items related to the evening's concerts.  Tonight the cases contained pages of the original handwritten scores of the Crumb Black Angels and the Barber Adagio (the quartet and orchestral versions), which are part of the library's collection.  (I wish I'd thought to take a picture of them.  How often do you see stuff like that?)  When wondering what is in the Library's collection, it's perhaps easier to ask what is NOT in the library's collection.

Works for string quartets follow a couple patterns.  One is a lyrical pattern, with a strong melody, sometimes passed from instrument, supported by the other players.  The Walker fit this pattern, a lovely theme expressively played by the musicians in turn.  The other common pattern for string quartets is is a discussion between equals.  The Ives fit this pattern, though at times it was more of an argument.  I wish I could have seen the instrumental parts, as the concert's exhaustive program notes mentioned some of the performance directions on the instrumental parts: for a intensively rhythmic loud section for viola "Saying the same thing over & over & louder--ain't arguing..." and for a tempo marking "Allegro con con Conny Mack (sic)."  (For the non-baseball geeks out there, Connie Mack was the manager and team owner for the first half of the 20th century of the Philadelphia Athletics, though he got his start in baseball playing for the first iteration of the Washington Nationals in the 1880s.).  The playing was intense, discordant, sometimes funny with quotations of popular melodies of the time.  Not everyone's cup of tea, but it was an exciting performance.

I knew the other pieces on the program, but I'd never heard them live.  The Crumb was a feast of sounds as the players played their instruments as well as water glasses and gongs with their bows.  I'd only heard a recording of the piece by the Kronos Quartet so it was fun to see it actually performed and how the players prepared for and created the array of sounds.

Barber's Adagio is better known in its orchestral incarnation, appearing in film scores (Amelie, Platoon) and in memorial services.  Seeing it performed as it was originally composed for quartet was a treat.  I enjoyed watching what each player did with the climbing theme as it was passed to him/her, something you don't get from an orchestra or movie soundtrack.  With the orchestral version, part of the climax is sheer volume of sound.  With a live quartet, the climax is more of a sonorous relaxation after the relentless climb.  In addition to seeing the score in the cases before the concert, I was moved when I read in the notes that the work's first performance was in the very hall I was sitting in, over eighty years ago.

It was fun to watch each player personify his part--one of the treats of live quartet concerts is sometimes players interact with each other and move with the music.  A deaf person could have watched tonight's concert and gotten a rough idea of the character of the music in each piece, from players looking to each other to play a figure together to the first violin's curling her leg back off the floor as the tension in her line increased.  I tend to move around a lot when I sing, so I enjoyed watching musicians doing the same (at a recent rehearsal, a tenor asked me "Can you not move around when you sing?  It's distracting."  I replied that I'd try but I sometimes can't help myself, though I wanted to reply "Can you not sing a beat behind the conductor?  It's distracting.").  It's hard to beat a live performance.

The Dvorak was a delight to hear live, as the musicians seemed to be very used to each other's style and responded in kind, particularly in the fast passages.  The slow movement was achingly beautiful, perhaps surpassing the Walker and perhaps the Barber in lyric beauty.

At the end of the concert the audience provided the normal DC combination of standing ovation/plea for encore/start putting on their coats.  The quartet came out for several bows but provided no encore (the program was no doubt draining, and they are going to repeat it tomorrow night).  But I got something that was better than an encore.  As I was leaving, I saw Library of Congress employees bringing the priceless Stradivarius instruments in their cases from back stage to their normal locked cabinets in the Whitehall Pavillion adjacent to the auditorium, escorted by armed US Capitol Police.  My imagination got the best of me.  All I could imagine on my way home was a mob of white haired classical music aficionados unsteadily storming the room where the instruments were stored, raining pitifully weak blows on the police with rolled programs, chanting "We want the Stradivarius!"  This, among many other reasons, is why I'm not a music critic.