Page 91 - The Strad (February 2020)

CONCERTS

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pristine intonation and just the right amount of ,' 8!&-!2; !2& $32)&'2;
intensity, and their playing of the melodies was Daedalus Quartet
absolutely beautiful. e Très lent was exceptional.
Never afraid to take risks, rst violinist Mark
Steinberg played with a whisper-soft piano, and
yet there was still room for texture beneath his lines:
how is it that he plays with such tenderness, so
softly, and yet with such pristine articulation?
e nal movement was packed with turbulent
energy but never at the expense of melodic clarity
or rhythmic integrity.
LEAH HOLLINGSWORTH

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ENGELMAN RECITAL HALL,

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BARUCH PERFORMING ARTS CENTER 12 NOVEMBER 2019 GEFFEN HALL, LINCOLN CENTER 21 NOVEMBER 2019

oughts of the incalculable damage wrought by e New York Philharmonic strings sounded
the Holocaust loomed large during this evening fantastic in the opening unison of Borodin’s rarely
with the Daedalus Quartet. It was while he was at heard Symphony no.2, playing with an intense but
the Terezín concentration camp that Viktor articulate sound and immaculate ensemble. With
Ullmann wrote his ird String Quartet op.46, the exception of some murky pizzicato in the second
in 1943 – the year before he was killed at Auschwitz. movement, the remainder of the work followed suit,
But given the work’s radiance and humanity – at with nicely shaped lines, terric energy and overall
least, in the Daedalus group’s condent hands – excellent playing.
one might never have guessed its despairing origin. Alisa Weilerstein took the stage for Saint-Saëns’s
Born in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1984, Gabriel First Cello Concerto, and her poise matched her
Bolaños grew up in Nicaragua and now teaches delivery. Each harmonic shift was re ected
composition in the US, at Arizona State University’s thoughtfully in her colour choices and nuanced
Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Tempe. playing, and she was unafraid to play quite softly –
In ve movements, Babel (2015; rev. 2019), for but she projected extremely well, even in the softest
string quartet, explores properties of speech, dynamics. Yet despite her impressive left-hand
informed by the composer’s use of spectral analysis articulation, some of her runs on the lower two
software. Some of the middle sections boast eŽects strings became lost in the orchestral textures
such as pizzicato in the three upper instruments, during the rst movement. Overall, her upper
while the cello oŽers a slow, extended scratch, strings not only projected better, but they seemed
like Morse code. If the results didn’t quite catch much brighter in colour. Meanwhile, her transition
as much re as the work’s genesis promised, the into the second movement was quite stunning,
ensemble should be admired for taking a risk with and I appreciated the solemnity of her approach
a piece by an oŽ-the-radar composer that was well to a concerto often written oŽ as a somewhat
worth hearing. ashy student work: she took each phrase
ough Mieczysław Weinberg’s family died in seriously and imbued the piece with a depth of
the Trawniki camp, he would survive another emotion that elevated it beyond the score. However,
50 years after writing his Piano Quintet op.18 when it was time for drama she certainly pulled out
(1944), steeped in the contradictory emotions of all the stops (without overdoing it), and she
awlessly dispatched all the technical di•culties
Shostakovich. With Renana Gutman in dramatic

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form at the piano, the Daedalus players mined every of the third movement.
Dvořák’s Symphony no.6 followed the interval,
scrap of the composer’s violence and ambiguity,
rightly shining a light on a masterpiece.
and the New York Philharmonic played this pastoral
BRUCE HODGES
www.thestrad.com work with elegance. Clear articulation in the strings FEBRUARY 2020 THE STRAD 89