United States Spring Music Competition – Beethoven, Janáček, Brahms: Takács Quartet (Edward Dusinberre, Harumi Rhodes [violins], Richard O’Neill [viola], András Fejér [cello]), Jeremy Denk (piano). Stephen A. Schwarzman Auditorium, Frick Assortment, New York, 1.5.2025. (ES-S)
Beethoven – String Quartet No.1 in F main, Op.18
Janáček – String Quartet No.1, ‘Kreutzer Sonata’
Brahms – Piano Quintet in F minor, Op.34
The reopening of the Frick Assortment this spring marks each a bodily transformation and a reaffirmation of its founding imaginative and prescient. Housed within the former Fifth Avenue mansion of industrialist Henry Clay Frick, the museum has lengthy supplied a uncommon fusion of intimacy and grandeur: Previous Grasp work, Renaissance bronzes and eighteenth-century ornamental arts displayed not in sterile galleries however in richly appointed home settings. Designed in 1914 by Carrère and Hastings – the Beaux-Arts architects additionally answerable for the New York Public Library – the mansion was later expanded in 1935 by John Russell Pope to accommodate its new position as a public museum.
The three-year renovation and growth, led by Selldorf Architects, preserved the important character of the mansion whereas discreetly modernizing its infrastructure and repurposing its inner structure. The upstairs personal quarters the place the Frick household as soon as lived have been reworked into extra galleries, and the conservation studios have been relocated. Among the many most important additions is a brand new, state-of-the-art auditorium – constructed under floor and named for donor Stephen A. Schwarzman – supposed for concert events, lectures and different public packages. Its debut indicators a renewed dedication to the Frick’s custom of chamber music and mental trade, reimagined for the twenty-first century.
Since its inaugural live performance in 1938, the museum has cultivated a distinguished chamber music custom. From Artur Schnabel to Mitsuko Uchida, from the Budapest Quartet to the Guarneri, many luminaries have contributed to the Frick’s repute as certainly one of New York’s premier venues for chamber music. Now, to mark the reopening of the museum and the debut of its new auditorium, the Frick has launched a Spring Music Competition that displays each historic depth and stylistic vary, with choices spanning Baroque to up to date. Among the many featured packages are a Handel recital with Lea Desandre and Anthony Roth Costanzo alongside the Jupiter Ensemble; the New York premieres of works by Tyshawn Sorey and Vijay Iyer carried out by Sarah Rothenberg; and a night of Robert Schumann violin sonatas with Alexi Kenney and Amy Yang.
The Takács Quartet first carried out on the Frick in 1984, early of their worldwide profession and only a decade after the ensemble’s founding in Budapest. Of the unique lineup, solely cellist András Fejér stays, but the group has constantly renewed itself with out compromising its inventive identification. Celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this 12 months, the quartet continues to exemplify readability, precision and expressive depth. For his or her return to the Frick as a part of the reopening celebrations, they have been joined by pianist Jeremy Denk in a program that moved between restraint, turbulence and grandeur – a perfect automobile for exploring the acoustic character of the Frick’s elegant and discreet new auditorium.
From the primary assault of Beethoven’s String Quartet No.1 in F main, the ensemble’s coordination was hanging – every entrance crisp, every phrase paced with quiet authority. There was no want for rhetorical underlining: articulation and steadiness did the work. The primary motion unfolded with a type of structural endurance, revealing not simply thematic logic however the give-and-take of 4 gamers deeply attuned to 1 one other. The Adagio was marked by restraint – affective, not sentimental – with silences that felt like held breaths. The Scherzo had chunk with out overstatement, and the ultimate motion’s rhythmic edge emerged extra from stress than quantity. The room’s acoustic readability undoubtedly supported the group’s ensemble precision, however the absence of wooden paneling gave the sound a sure neutrality – at occasions a coolness – that appeared to empty some heat from the internal voices. The Takács’s studying recalled Haydn, not solely in its class and motivic financial system however in its quiet refusal of grandiosity. Their Beethoven was neither nostalgic nor monumental. As an alternative, it was alive to element and formed by long-line considering, the type of efficiency the place motivic connections – somewhat than tonal peaks – present the contour.
One of the crucial distinctive string quartets of the early twentieth century, Janáček’s ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ stays surprisingly underperformed. Written in 1923 and impressed by Tolstoy’s novella of the identical title, the work was additionally formed by Janáček’s obsessive, unreciprocated attachment to Kamila Stösslová, the younger married lady who served as muse to a lot of his late compositions. Emotionally risky and structurally unorthodox, the quartet bypasses standard growth in favor of obsessive fragments, abrupt contrasts and compressed lyricism.
The Takács gamers didn’t attempt to unify the music’s torn edges however leaned into its jagged lyricism – its abrupt emotional pivots, fierce whispers and wounded outbursts. The place Beethoven hinted at Haydn’s motivic logic, right here Janáček’s repetitions and fragmentary gestures appeared to circle reminiscence and rupture. The ensemble’s management remained agency, however the emotional power was far much less contained: sudden swells broke by way of whispered pianissimos, phrases resulted in silence or dissolution, and the gamers allowed dissonance to hold within the air unresolved. Dusinberre’s first violin traces pushed towards the operatic, virtually vocal of their anguish; Fejér, together with his grainy, dark-hued tone, strengthened the work’s psychological weight from under; and O’Neill, with a mellow however resonant tone, gave form to the quartet’s turbulent inside, sustaining expressive stress inside even essentially the most fragmented materials. His phrasing created connective tissue between violent outbursts and moments of stasis, lending coherence to a rating that may simply really feel episodic. On this extra uncovered and unstable musical terrain, the auditorium’s readability served the music’s depth, although once more with out lending it a lot heat. If something, the house heightened the sense of emotional rawness – a type of clear brutality, sharpened against this with the understated intimacy of the Beethoven that preceded it.
The second half was dedicated to Brahms’s Piano Quintet in F minor, a piece whose stormy grandeur and structural density offered yet one more expressive problem. Jeremy Denk joined the quartet, not as soloist however as equal associate – alert to texture and particularly delicate to the interaction between piano and strings. The Frick lent an 1883 Steinway & Sons live performance grand named Palisandra for the event – an instrument constructed throughout Brahms’s lifetime, whose resonance and tonal palette evoked the very soundworld by which the quintet was conceived. But on this intimate house, the piano’s projection often tipped the steadiness and overwhelmed the ensemble’s rigorously blended dynamic. To their credit score, Denk and the Takács responded with sensitivity – adjusting contact and articulation the place doable, although the instrument’s energy was at all times simply on the fringe of containment.
Edward Dusinberre formed the primary violin’s surging traces with lyrical urgency; Harumi Rhodes, within the second violin seat, responded with readability and poise. Below the attentive and proud gaze of her father, the nice violist Samuel Rhodes – a longtime member of the Juilliard String Quartet – she performed as she had all through the night: with quiet authority and a finely judged sense of ensemble. The Andante unfolded with a type of looking out lyricism, gently unsettled by harmonic shifts. The Scherzo moved with darkish power, however by no means rushed; and within the Finale, Denk and the quartet held a good concentrate on pacing and cohesion, resisting the temptation to let the closing materials sprawl. There was grandeur, definitely – however at all times formed from inside, not imposed from outdoors.
What lingered most after the ultimate chord was not simply the refinement of the enjoying, however the sheer vitality the Takács Quartet continues to deliver to the stage. They play not like a bunch wanting again, however like musicians nonetheless in love with the act of discovery. That sense of urgency, of collective listening and risk-taking, was current in each phrase. Nothing of their efficiency felt settled or ordinary. If something, it supplied a way of renewal – of chamber music as a dwelling artwork, and of the quartet’s evolving bond with it.
Edward Sava-Segal
