Moving Sounds—JACK Is Back (9/15/12)

Boy, I really wanted to like this better than I did. Too much of a downer?

So this was my second hearing of the JACK Quartet and my second concert of the Moving Sounds festival. There were two pieces on the program—String Quartet No. 5 (2007), Georg Friedrich Haas; and häuten: Paramyth (String Quartet No. 1) (2012) (World Premiere), Clemens Gadenstätter. (I’m not making this up, you know.)

In the first piece, the quartet members were spread throughout the hall—two on stage (violin and cello), one in the back of the house (violin), and one in the balcony (viola—I know, because I was there, too). From the program notes: “The listeners find themselves inside the sound, inside overtone chords …” OK, I heard overtones; in fact there was a lengthy overtone section. But once I experienced it, I didn’t need to be listening to it again and again and … well, you get my drift. The opening was a long glissando (slow) that led into the lengthy overtone section. Next, a tune (a snippet) was actually introduced, but it didn’t last long. I actually saw a man in the front row covering his ears. I’m glad I was in the balcony. There was, once again, no discernible movement format.

Moving on to häuten: Paramyth. It had an explosive opening leading into tone bending, biting bow strokes, quite a few screeching, scratching sounds and aggressive bowing, exploring sound for sound’s sake not (to my ear) music for music’s sake. Every once in a while, there was a “meow-like” sound from individual instruments. Really, that’s the entirety of my notes. Oh, wait. Both the cellist and violist had horsehair(?) dangling from their bows—the violist from both ends of his bow. The cellist pulled horsehair(?) off three times. The violist never did. As stated earlier, I really wanted to like this more.

In fact, I think I’d like to hear JACK play some mainstream string quartet repertoire. Maybe Mivos quartet, too.

ConcertMeister