Frigid and rigid Quartet takes on Kurtag

Author: Andrew Throdahl

The Keller Quartett (yes, with two t's) takes music seriously. From its Nov. 2 program, one gets an idea of just how furrowed the group's brows are - the first half was a carefully arranged comparative essay on how W.A. Mozart and Gyorgy Kurtag both memorialized their influences. The second half was Schubert's endless G major string quartet (and, incidentally, his last). So when the players appeared on the Mahaney '84 concert hall stage last Sunday afternoon, their comically dour expressions came as no surprise. Violist Zóltan Gál seemed to be awaiting his execution, and the rest of the crew must have been brushing up on some Kafka before warming up. The most brow-furrowing touch, however, was a decree to hold applause for the entire first half in order to fully communicate some presumably profound message. Instead of applause, the audience coughed.

The first piece was a set of awkward transcriptions Mozart made of five fugues from Book II of Bach's Well-Tempered Klavier. Since the fugues do not translate especially well to string quartet it was difficult to judge whether the Keller's playing was hopelessly colorless or simply uninspired. Nevertheless, it is unusual to come across an ensemble that can make stately music, like the E-flat major fugue, sound mournful. The fugues were paired with Mozart's Adagio and Fugue in C Minor, apparently to underscore Mozart's admiration for Bach. The shift between Bach and Mozart never happened, resulting in a heavy Adagio and equally unsubtle Fugue.

That said, the Kurtag works that filled out the first half were magnificent. The String Quartet Op. 28 is a fifteen movement elegy to Webern and a deceased friend of the composer. Some of the movements in this ultra-compact, hyper-detailed melodrama last for fifteen seconds, yet the work offers as much variety in color, texture and temporality as a Mahler symphony. At his most imaginative, Kurtag can tell a story with two notes, which in turn places enormous pressure on the performer. All of the textures were lucidly expressed, and each of the movements seemed to be meticulously placed in context. The occasional tonal outbursts were heartbreaking.

Equally convincing were the six Moments Musicaux, Op. 44, which drastically expand from Schubert's adorable miniatures of the same name. The first movement, entitled "Invocatio," seems to sum up Kurtag's art - all of his pieces seem to be invocations of disparate influences, like Bartok, Webern, Beethoven, Bach and Janacek. The Keller Quartett should get credit for simply making these complex little works comprehensible. Technically, the ensemble seemed at home in Kurtag's clockwork world - the harmonics in the fifth "moment" were memorably immaculate.

By intermission, however, I was asking myself whether the Keller's strengths lay in Kurtag, or whether Mozart and Bach had revealed inherent flaws in their playing. The second half of the program provided the necessary middle ground to draw some conclusions, if there are any, about this seemingly inconsistent group.

Schubert's last quartet, written as he was dying of syphilis, contributes to a trend in music history: abstraction in the face of death. Beethoven's late works are caked in recondite materials, as Wagner's Parsifal distinguishes itself from earlier works for its vaporous orchestration. Likewise, the fifteenth string quartet is as oblique as Schubert gets, full of resignation and haze. It seems likely the Keller chose this quartet because of its "modernism," although the performance was not as enlightening as Schubert would probably have wished.

Cellist Judit Szabó stood out as the weakest player. Her solo lines, particularly in the second movement, were sterile. Sometimes one suspected her of hesitating before her entrances. Unlike the Takacs quartet, which performed here last month, the players hardly ever acknowledged one another - a graver pitfall than technical insufficiency. They rarely breathed together as an ensemble should always do in performance. Lyrical and rhapsodic passages tended to be disconnected, but lively, virtuoso climaxes were cleanly controlled. Perhaps this demonstrates that the Keller's forte (no pun intended) is simply meeting technical demands, but neglecting some of the touches that could really distinguish them.

The Schubert was difficult to sit through, not only for its length, but also for the precarious page turning during the final two movements. Their edition was inconsiderately designed, given the meager three seconds the Keller had to lift, turn and play. Gál somehow hit his stand (with his bow?) during the fourth movement, and the ensemble tripped over a beat. If the Keller has been playing this quartet for a while, they should have ironed out these wrinkles by now.

Perhaps we are just spoiled with visits from the greatest string quartets in the world, but in general the Keller quartet seemed drained and arid, missing out on much of the joy of playing music - even depressing music.