Last Sunday night the Tokyo String Quartet filled Finney Chapel with the gorgeous melodies of Brahms, Tower and Ravel as part of their continuing project to perform the entire chamber music works of Brahms and four commissioned pieces. The Quartet’s concert at Oberlin was part of an international tour planned for this year that is the culmination of a great deal of hard work with the repertoire.
With 30 years experience in performing and recording some of the best chamber music ever written, the Quartet’s concert at Oberlin was no exception to their tradition of excellence.
They gave a stunning performance of two Brahms quartets and a commissioned piece by Joan Tower, received so enthusiastically by the audience that an encore of the second movement of Ravel’s only string quartet followed the programmed works. The smooth sound of the quartet was accentuated by the incredible tone of the Stradivarius instruments known as the “Paganini Quartet,” which are currently on loan to the players through the Nippon Music Foundation.
Perhaps one of the most impressive aspects of the performance was the evident connection between the players. An energy seemed to flow between and around them, conveying their musicality to the audience in a special way.
Although this fluid energy brought together the Quartet’s different sounds to create a wonderful ensemble, each player was still able to contribute his own voice to the mixture. Cellist Clive Greensmith had a rich and powerful voice that supported the rest of the quartet, while violist Kazuhide Isomura had a surprisingly strong sound, demonstrated in his solos and duets with the first violin in the third movement of Brahms’ String Quartet No. 3. The two violinists, Mikhail Kopelman and Kikuei Ikeda, had an icily brilliant tone that meshed well with the many trills, runs and other ornamentations in the music.
Commenting on the communication within the quartet, Kikuei Ikeda said, “we don’t have a conductor, so we can discuss [the] music... and decide by ourselves [how it should sound].”
The distinctive sound of the Quartet fit perfectly with the music they performed. The players performed the Brahms piece with ease in a style that was light, yet reached a certain musical depth.
Perhaps the only aspect of the concert that did not achieve the brilliance for which the Quartet is known was their rendition of the work by Tower, “In Memory,” completed only last year. Although the work was effective and emotional, there were moments when the piece’s beautiful melancholy was obscured by unconventional rhythmic and melodic combinations that seemed somewhat forced and unrefined. Reminiscent of the 11th Symphony of Shostakovich in theme and form, the piece was an expression of pain and anguish, but fell short in the symphony’s musical portrait of these emotions. In general, however, all the music on the program was beautifully played.
Although only one founding member of the Tokyo String Quartet, violist Kazuhide Isomura, remains with the group, the current members uphold the tradition begun in 1969 of performing while teaching at Yale University, where they are the university’s quartet in residence. Of all the kinds of ensembles, string quartets are known as the hardest to compose music for. It also takes excellent musicianship to perform in such a group since the parts are all so exposed and integral to the music. “The sound of the quartet, to me, is so pure,” Ikeda said.
No words could do justice to the experience of hearing the Tokyo String Quartet perform. Their renditions of the Brahms quartets, Tower and Ravel works were sublime and certainly deserved the applause and appreciation that they received from the audience. If this concert is representative of the rest of the tour, the Quartet will likely receive international recognition again as one of the world’s premier performing ensembles.