Crackerjack Quartet

Well, that's a bit of a misnomer. In actuality it was the Hugo Wolf Quartet. Founded (and based?) in Vienna, they presented a well-received concert at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York—a venue I recently discovered in my Open House New York weekend. Architecturally, the building is a gem in midtown Manhattan, and the concert space is a warm, intimate (82 seats) setting.

The program:
Werden-Sein-Vergehen, quartet for strings (1905), Anton Webern
String Quartet No. 3, upwards, behind the onstreaming it mooned (2000/2001), Karlheinz Essl
String Quartet No. 4, Le temps ardent (1994), Zbigniew Bargielsky

The Webern was my favorite—I'm sure it was ground-breaking for its time, but it had the most structured concept of the three pieces, in my opinion. The two later pieces had recognizable compositional techniques on display, but I felt as though it was a quiz—and I was supposed to fill out a questionnaire at the end. Motif? check; passing sequences from one instrument to another/all? check; trills/tremolos? check; unisons giving way to microtones? check; pizzicato (some almost violent)? check; a way to round out the end of the work ... ?

Well, see, that's one of the problems. There were no clues, via program notes, as to whether there were two, three, or one through-composed movement(s) for any of the works. And when hearing a 2000/2001 work (or a 1994 one for that matter), you just don't know—is a 15-second silence part of the work (a la John Cage?) or the end of the movement/work? Slightly awkward.

Still, really excellent playing, a beautiful venue (I look forward to a violin/piano concert in early November), and a very pleasant evening. I sat in the small balcony section (16 seats). I think I'll try that again.

ConcertMeister