“Beethoven shows us the way, and that way is life affirming.”
Thinking about leaving the concert early on April 6th? Fine, go ahead, be the first car out of the garage, but you would miss one of the most exhilarating endings in music. The final minute of Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 59 No. 3, says violinist Serena Canin of the Brentano String Quartet, is full of joy.
“We come out of a lot of commotion, a lot of scrubbing on the strings, and we play these expectant chords, Womp! Womp! Then, the best second violin part in all of music. I love to play it. It’s charming, fun, light in spirit, and I feel like I’m looking down on the situation from above. Beethoven is at his most heroic in his middle period, and this quartet is a perfect example of that. It’s not a 20th century ending full of gloom and despair. Beethoven shows us the way, and that way is life affirming.”
Welcome to the exuberant musical life of the Brentano String Quartet, which formed in 1992 at Juilliard and has played together ever since with only one change of personnel. (Cellist Nina Lee joined the group in 1999.) Canin remembers their very first concert at a small church on Staten Island. A friend gave the ensemble, still in graduate school, an opportunity to perform. “We owe so much to the people who open doors for us in the beginning,” Canin says. That is why today she runs a concert series called Music Middays that gives young players vital exposure to a responsive audience.
People talked, the quartet grew together, and before long they needed a name. “We had the hardest time with that,” she says. “We were descending into humor, some ridiculous ideas, when my husband suggested ‘Brentano.’ Antonie Brentano was Beethoven’s friend and patron and, possibly, the ‘Immortal Beloved’ he wrote to in 1812. That is still a mystery, but it’s a good name, and it’s easy to spell and pronounce.”
In 1995 they received the first Cleveland Quartet Award, a prize endowed by eight presenters of chamber music which guaranteed them, and subsequent winners, concert dates around the country. “Most competitions give monetary prizes,” Canin says, “but the Cleveland Award offers the most precious thing of all. It gave us concerts in major halls, and we were on our way.”
Now in its 34th year, the Brentano Quartet still thrives on excitement. They have been praised for playing with both exceptional virtuosity and “tremendous love, wit and charm.” When they chose the order for their Denver concert, they had excitement in mind, because Beethoven’s first string quartet, Op.18 No.1, ends with three resounding chords that will fill the hall with optimism before intermission.
But how to begin the concert? Saving the best for first, IMHO, they will open with the mysterious introduction of the “Harp” Quartet, Op. 74, a favorite of amateur players like myself who cheer inwardly when they can pass around, without stumbling, the pizzicato passages that give the work its name. Cheering outwardly would break the line as all four instruments pluck, first in pairs and later from cello to viola to second violin continuous arpeggios in rhythmic groups of two, then three, then four, before grabbing their bows to play on the string. Near the end of the first movement, while the first violinist is fiddling furiously, after another round of pizzicato, Canin will emerge from a duet with the viola to take the tune to one of the most glorious cadences in the entire repertoire. The second violin’s highest note there chokes me up every time.
Then comes the sublime slow movement of the “Harp,” followed by a Presto with a premonition of Mendelssohn, and a final set of variations. The quartet ends with what Canin calls a “shrug,” which is why it is almost never used to end a concert. So there, in reverse order, is a program you will not want to miss.
The Brentanos are treating us to three Beethoven quartets because next year they will play the entire cycle of Beethoven’s sixteen quartets and the Grosse Fuge at Wigmore Hall in London and the 92nd Street Y in New York City. They have already recorded the late quartets. Let’s hope they will also make a permanent record of their unique energy in the early and middle works.
– Kim Millett
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