New Zealand Quartet stands and delivers

Sunday night we generally like to be home, preparing for the week ahead and trying to turn in early, with no Jon Stewart or Conan O’Brien enticing us to stay up. At least, that’s how we roll in the Copley home, and considering most Sunday events are scheduled for the afternoon, and Sunday is the bread-and-butter night for TV, we probably aren’t alone.

But, the way the schedule has worked out, the Chamber Music Society of Central Kentucky has had to schedule its first two concerts for the 2007-08 season for 7:30 Sunday evenings. Fortunately, both shows have been well worth starting the week off a bit more bleary eyed than we might hope.

The year started off with the Colorado Quartet playing an interesting program with a zeal that made them well worth seeing live. It continued last night with the New Zealand String Quartet playing a concert Lexington Philharmonic concertmaster and Society board member Dan Mason declared the best ever for the series. Unlike him, I haven’t seen all the Chamber Music Society concerts, but I’d be hard pressed to argue his assertion based on the New Zealanders’ performance.

They brought a program of music from the early 19th Century to the 21st Century and played it all with precision and passion.

Entering the Singletary Center for the Arts recital hall Sunday evening, it was striking to see all the music stands raised. The Kiwis play on their feet, save for cellist Rolf Gjelsten, who plays seated on a platform that raises him to head level with the other three musicians.

Does playing standing up — a position in classical music usually reserves for soloists, singers and percussionists — add energy and vitality to their playing? We’d need to see them seated to know for sure. But it seemed to. If you concentrated on the players’ feet for a few measures, you saw knees buckling, heels rising, and even a little soft shoe from time to time.

This was a physical concert for the Quartet.

And it was demanding, the centerpiece being Eight Colors by star Chinese composer Tan Dun.

Eight Colors may have required aural adjustment for some in the audience with its series of slides, scrapes and plucks making up the majority of the piece. But it was an engrossing journey through movements such as the barely audible Zen and percussive Drum and Gong. The piece required skilled phrasing, virtuoso playing and sharp communication, all of which the Quartet has in spades. They made the case for a work violist Gillian Ansell called, “a modern masterpiece.” And the audience was receptive, numerous people going on stage at intermission to look at the music, which the members of the quartet had left on their music stands.

The New Zealand Quartet followed that first half closer with the second half opener Bright Light and Cloud Shadows by Gao Ping, which the ensemble commissioned and premiered earlier this year. It isn’t as explicitly Chinese as Eight Colors, instead concentrating on the moods of watching clouds go by. That was accomplished through a lot of yawning, whistling strings frequently colored by moments such as a plucky cello or languid violin solo. There was growing tension in the form of a theme that was initially buried and grew through the performance. Was that tension the cloud shadows of the title? Was a storm approaching?

Cloud Shadows was a lot to take in on one listen, and we have to hope the NZSQ is looking at committing it to CD. The group is already committing Felix Mendelssohn’s string quartets to recording, and they opened Sunday night with Opus 44, No. 1 in D Major, which gave the ensemble a quick dash out of the gate and violinist Helene Pohl some lovely solos.

The main concert ended with Robert Schumann’s String Quartet in F Major, Opus 41, No. 2. Prior to playing it, Pohl talked about how Schumann often composed off the beat, clearly explaining the tension we heard later in the last three movements, where it often felt like the music was pressing against some immovable force. Playing the counter-intuitive piece would be impressive for any group, though by then the Quartet had already proven itself up to the task.

When the applause died down, after an encore of George Gershwin’s Second Prelude for Piano in C-sharp minor, arranged for string quartet by NZSQ violinist Douglas Bielman, a man behind me said, “This audience isn’t greedy enough.” He was right. One or two more numbers would have been welcome. But it was after bedtime Sunday night. Fortunately, the next two CMSofCKY concerts are at 3 p.m. on Sundays.