Piano quartet more than just "and co."

Author: Andrew Throdahl

Posters advertising the first Performing Arts Series concert of the new year read "Sophie Shao and Friends," placing the photogenic young cellist as the predetermined star of the evening. This was misleading, since Shao's "friends" matched her in both role and ability. Here I will restrain from making a "show-off" pun. The advertisement may point to the impromptu formation of this piano quartet.

Saturday evening was the ensemble's first public performance together after only two rehearsals, and one that would have been just as impressive had they been together for a decade.

The program was slightly disproportionate, with two of Brahms' monolithic Piano Quartets, in C minor (op. 60) and G minor (op. 25), alongside Mozart's unusually expansive Piano Quartet in E-flat major (K. 493). The evening might have been more elegant without Mozart, although the latter was perhaps the most successfully executed work on the program.

Pei-Yao Wang's hands and technique were at home in Mozart. The detailed filigree of the first and third movements was faultless. The strings played these outer movements with a clean wristiness that matched Wang's overt technical accomplishment.

The ensemble as a whole had a cohesive understanding of the piece, fitting in "agogics" - or small delays that outline some structural bend in the score - in logical places. The Larghetto movement never sounded sentimental, or, on the other extreme, stilted.

For audience members unfamiliar with classical music, nothing could have prepared them for the nuclear fallout at the end of the first movement of Brahms' C Minor Quartet (1873). C minor is a key usually wound up in strife. Bach's organ Passacaglia, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and Pathetique Sonata seem to prefigure the drama of this movement, especially one coming from a composer who revered his German antecedents.

The ensemble's realization of the first movement must have been cathartic, following Mozart, and perhaps for that reason, it seemed to overshadow the other three movements.

One of the reasons the performance of the C Minor Quartet was effective was that the strings sounded like three string soloists rather than a string trio. Violinist Tai Murray's distinctive, smoky tone was effective amid the traffic of Brahms' highly contrapuntal developments. Violist Eric Nowlin brought genuine ardor to Brahms' carefully crafted alto lines, which are sometimes difficult to hear on recordings. And the star, Shao, played her well-phrased solos with that burnished tone cited on the poster.

The G Minor Quartet op. 25, which closed the program, is generally gentler music than op. 60. The first movement seems to shy away from the catastrophe found in its C minor counterpart. The second movement is nocturnal in its fun, unlike the op. 60 scherzo's unrepressed anger. The ensemble took a straightforward approach to these movements. Little sounded labored, and yet little distinguished their interpretation. Both Murray and Wang were slightly too restrained, neglecting at times to play forte when instructed to - perhaps to save energy for the closing movements.

Thankfully, the group let itself be carried away by the final two movements. If Brahms ever wrote an opera I imagine his love duet would sound something like the Andante movement of op. 25. The piano part seems to be written for a Baritone and the violin, unless I'm an overactive listener, has a feminine charm to it. The ensemble communicated this rapture effectively. They took a refreshingly brisk pace for the Andante's march-like tangents.

In both Brahms works, Wang was occasionally inaccurate in blocky, chordal passages, but tended to redeem herself in the fast, wiry portions of the score. She made the exhausting whirling of the "Rondo alla Zingarese" look easy. Occassionally, one wondered if she was cheating on chords (especially in the finale), omitting an octave for the sake of speed. This would be unfortunate, but who cares? The famous "Rondo" sounded sleek and colorful, taken at a speed just tipping on abandon.

I recall that Pei-Yao Wang has performed at Middlebury at least twice in the past three years, each time with a different ensemble. One of these performances featured the other Brahms Piano Quartet, op. 26 in A major, which was not as auspicious as the Brahms Quartets heard last weekend. One can hope that "Sophie Shao and friends" stays together for posterity.