NYT Review: The Orion Quartet Plays Kirchner Disguised as Bartok

[Frank Forman]

Why no mention of the Hungarian violinist's name. It was none other than
my favorite violinist, Joseph Szigeti!

I had Szigeti's remark and so got a recording of this on Music & Arts with
great anticipation. I was disappointed. Leon, you're no Bela!

Review: The Orion Quartet Plays Kirchner Disguised as Bartok
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/21/arts/music/review-the-orion-quartet-plays-kirchner-disguised-as-bartok.html

By CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM

When Leon Kirchner's first string quartet was unveiled in 1950, a
Hungarian violinist buttonholed its young American composer. "Do you
realize what you've done?" he asked Mr. Kirchner, who was then 31.
"You have written Bartok's Seventh Quartet!"

On Thursday the Orion String Quartet performed the work as part of
its survey of Kirchner's complete quartets. His fourth and final
effort in the genre was written for the Orion players in 2006, three
years before his death, at 90, and that one sounds a little like,
well, Bartok's Eighth.

A sign of limited progress, or of the integrity of a compositional
voice? The beauty of a complete cycle such as this one, which the
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center presented at the Rose Studio
as part of a season-long meta-cycle of such cycles, by composers
including Beethoven, Bartok, Nielsen and Zemlinsky, is that it gives
listeners a chance to steep themselves in issues of style, voice and
lineage.

In fact, Kirchner's four quartets reflect a range of influences. His
Second, written in 1958, is imbued with the spirit of Schoenberg,
with whom Kirchner studied in California. While the First Quartet
draws its testy energy from constant changes in articulation--
smooth slurs, gritty staccato, resonant plucked notes and skeletal
ones tapped with the wooden side of the bow--the Second is more
unified. If the players in the First seem constantly to play Devil's
advocate, questioning one another's musical statements, the Second
invites them to collaborate on a blended palette of sounds and
occasional passages of poignant wistfulness.

The Orion players--the brothers Daniel and Todd Phillips on
violin, the violist Steven Tenenbom and the cellist Timothy Eddy--
proved wonderfully responsive to the complexity of the material,
playing with excitement and a sense of purpose that helped lend
shape to movements that often seem to evolve according to whim.

The Quartet No. 3 for Strings and Electronic Tape (an iPhone
controlled by a digital foot pedal was used in this performance) won
Kirchner a Pulitzer Prize in 1967. Its dialogue between electronic
and acoustic sounds is engagingly orchestrated, with players
responding to clicks, bleats and gurgles with squirrely bow strokes
and whistling harmonics. At one point, Daniel Phillips seemed to ape
the aloofness of the recorded sounds with mechanical runs of tiny
high notes. But unlike many works for acoustic instruments and
electronics written today, this one remained clear in its
distinction between sounds created by sentient beings and those
emitted by machines.

Kirchner's Quartet No. 4 is his most tuneful, although here, as in
his First Quartet, instruments often seem to sabotage one another's
melodies as they jostle for attention. The piece has a certain
crowded, urban energy that, for all its connections to the past,
feels very much of our moment.

[Joe Roberts]

(snips for brevity)

"The Quartet No. 3 for Strings and Electronic Tape (an iPhone
controlled by a digital foot pedal was used in this performance) won
Kirchner a Pulitzer Prize in 1967. Its dialogue between electronic
and acoustic sounds is engagingly orchestrated, with players
responding to clicks, bleats and gurgles with squirrely bow strokes
and whistling harmonics. At one point, Daniel Phillips seemed to ape
the aloofness of the recorded sounds with mechanical runs of tiny
high notes. But unlike many works for acoustic instruments and
electronics written today, this one remained clear in its
distinction between sounds created by sentient beings and those
emitted by machines."

- - -

... aping 'mechanical runs' ... by 'sentient beings'?

Error 404 ... file not found. Does not compute.

If in the beginning was rhythm (or was melody, as some assert), have we been
aping ever since?

Joe