by Craig Brinker
There is a lot of
chamber music being performed on any given week in New York, and one
of the best tickets in the city this week was pianist Xiayin Wang and fellow rising stars, the Escher String Quartet. The ensemble delivered fine
performances of some of the quintessential chamber repertoire Monday evening at Alice Tully Hall, presenting Fauré's Piano Quartet No. 1, an arrangement of Cuatro
Estaciones Porteñas by Astor
Piazzolla, and Brahms' Piano Quintet. Throughout
the evening, the
Escher Quartet proved that they are an ensemble that
understands the importance of structure, narrative, and emotional
resonance—conveying the big picture of
each work without glossing over the details.
The Fauré calls upon the pianist to play neverending cascades of
arpeggios, and Ms. Wang imbued these flowing lines with grace and
tenderness, creating undulating waves under the melodic interplay of
the strings. In that wondrous moment when the slow movement moves
from minor to major, the performers were thoughtful and paced the moment well.
The middle work on the
program was an arrangement of two movements of Argentine composer
Ástor Piazzolla's Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (The Four Seasons of Buenos
Aires). The performers took
advantage of the varied moods in both
movements, giving
each episode a distinctly ethnic flavor. Piazzolla's
music demands to be played with style and personality, and both Wang and the quartet
put plenty of passion
into
the music,
with the
string players laying into the noted glissandos that
make Piazzolla's music so
distinctive.
The performers threw
themselves into the Brahms without reservation, lending the piece a
sense inevitable gravity. From the assertiveness of the opening theme
to the tricky fugato in the final movement, they gave clarity and
form to Brahms' ideas. The Scherzo in particular was played with a
tremendous intensity and momentum, with the players attacking the
galloping rhythm in the 2/4 sections.
The
beginning of the finale was sublime, with the slowly overlapping harmonies creating mystery and nostalgia. Yang's playing was by turns fluid and graceful, dark and mysterious. Unlike the Fauré, this was not a parlor piece,
but a work full of gestures on a grand, symphonic scale—chamber music
rendered in cinemascope, and Xiayin Wang and the Escher Quartet's
performance was true to that spirit.