The "boutique" hotel The Gershwin lies just one block away from the street where George Gershwin began his career, 28th Street, or "Tin Pan Alley." Its facade and lobby area evoke the Art Deco era of the 1920s and 30s and put one in a "Gershwin state of mind."
As part of the contagious sounds series [http://www.contagioussounds.net/contagioussounds/about.html], the Del Sol String Quartet offered up a wide-ranging program that took listeners on a sonic journey. A great program-opener, Fast Blue Village by Elena Katz-Chernin, was a mash-up of Baroque passacaglia, jazz walking bass, soaring melodies and rhythmic energy. The quartet then paid its respects to Gershwin by performing two arrangements of Gershwin songs by Bill Thorpe, whimsical string quartet versions of piano novelty music. ("Love Walked In" and "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise").
From the art deco whimsy of Gershwin to the intensity of Song of the Ch'in by Zhou Long was quite a leap, but the recreation of the sound of zither-like Chinese instrument with its vocabulary of sounds took the audience into another world. In this work, extended techniques such as string glissandi, harmonics along with percussive effects become normal parts of the sonic landscape. Based on a Tang dynasty poem, the work contemplates a landscape whose central focus is a lake. In the"arioso" sections of the work, soft tremolos often accompany a lyrical melody and put the listener into a peaceful, contemplative mood. The middle "vivo" section incorporates percussive effects very imaginatively and often to humorous effect. One can imagine a lone fisherman "waging battle' with his "enemy," a fish.
The quartet then transformed itself into a flamenco ensemble with its calling forth of this great Spanish tradition in La Sangre de la Luna by American composer Daniel Ward. With guitar effects abounding, listeners were drawn into a more familiar but also still exotic sound world.
After an intermission, the ensemble previewed an upcoming performance of Ben Johnston's String Quartet No. 10 by performing its first and fourth movements. Through his devotion to the string quartet genre, Mr. Johnston has certainly enriched its repertoire. This particular type of ensemble has provided him with a chance to explore the potential of just intonation. For this quartet, he developed a 9-tone scale based on the 8th and 16th partials of the overtone series. Both his use of this scale and his straightforward approach to form give the music both a familiar and unfamiliar quality at the same time. For example, the first movement (Brisk, intent) is composed in textbook sonata form (complete with repetitions) and has a generally tonal sound that is, however, skewed somewhat by the 9-tone scale and the effect of just-intonation as opposed to well-tempered tuning. The fourth movement ("Spritely, not too fast") was not performed very spritely but evoked the sound world of the Renaissance consort of viols. Its pensive, consistently polyphonic style lulls the listener into a kinds of nostalgic dream world only to be taken aback by the sudden appearance of "Oh Danny Boy" at the end. At the very end, the listener is mesmerized as the performers sustain notes while playing glissandi harmonics with their left hands and bring the work to an enchanting conclusion.
For its final work on the program, the quartet once again entered into the domain of another music culture with a performance of "Nayshaboorak (Calligraphy No. 6)" by Iranian/American composer Reza Vali. The work anchors itself in Western Romanticism with its grand, rhetorical gestures, soaring melody lines and an almost Brahmsian approached all of which is tempered by occasional microtonal inflections and high-pitched passages that resemble Middle Eastern recitation. The movement back and fourth from quartal to tertian harmony also implies feet planted in two different worlds.
The Del Sol String Quartet was certainly most impressive in its ability to morph itself according to the needs of the music and deliver a satisfying evening of chamber music. They definitely belong in the "contageous sounds" series. What they deliver is catching.
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