From Eerie Shards to Vivid Emotion Pacifica Quartet Presents Shulamit Ran Premiere and Classics

November 9, 2014 By: Zachary Woolfe

Encores in opera houses are different than they are in concert halls, where artists usually respond to ovations by showing off something new. In opera, though, excited audiences will demand a “bis” — a repeat of an aria that’s gone particularly well. After warm applause at the end of the excellent Pacifica Quartet’s concert on Friday evening at Alice Tully Hall, its members sat down for a surprising encore: the second movement, “Menace,” of Shulamit Ran’s “Glitter, Doom, Shards, Memory” (2012-13), which the group had played in its entirety before intermission. It was a rare string quartet bis. The Pacifica clearly believes strongly in “Glitter, Doom, Shards, Memory,” whose world premiere it gave in May in Toronto; presented under the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s auspices, this was the work’s New York premiere. In four movements, it is inspired by the short life and eerie art of the painter Felix Nussbaum (1904-44), who died at Auschwitz. Ms. Ran’s craftsmanship is, as ever, expert. The first movement, “That Which Happened,” begins with ethereal textures that thicken, with the addition of pizzicato plucking and meatier cello lines, as the harmonies grow troubled. The instruments mimic sirens, and dissonances build before an uneasily calm ending that sets the stage for the second movement, an anxiously rhythmic danse macabre, even more fiercely lucid in its encore performance.

In the third movement, impassioned solos emerge from ominous quiet, and high arpeggios in the violins (Simin Ganatra and Sibbi Bernhardsson) quiver alongside the earthy cello (Brandon Vamos). Ms. Ran skillfully deploys these extremes of color, volume and pitch, yet the overall somewhat chilly impression is one of poise. Similarly, the final movement, “Shards, Memory,” seems intended to convey a mood of dislocation and disintegration. But it ends up being merely coherent and polished, with an eloquent viola solo (Masumi Per Rostad). Like the rest of the work, it inspires admiration more than emotion. Authentic emotion emerged more freely from the rest of the program: Haydn’s Quartet in B flat, “Sunrise,” performed with delicacy and clarity; Puccini’s “Crisantemi,” effectively restrained; and, especially, Mendelssohn’s final quartet, in F minor, composed just after his sister’s death. The Pacifica was alert to the fevered work’s restless wanderings and brief oases of calm, sustaining feeling in the Adagio not by overstatement but through unanimity of phrasing. The sound in the second movement was hauntingly muted, like a dirge heard through the fog, and the ferocious finale almost uncomfortably vivid.