| 2008-01-14 Washington Post |
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Artis Quartet Vienna |
| Some claim that wine tasting is about more than appreciating flavors and aromas but rather, in each sip, finding something of the so-called terroir -- the characteristics given by the geography where the wine was made. Listening to the Artis Quartet Vienna at the Kennedy Center on Friday evening made one wonder whether something similar might go for string quartets. Not only was there much to appreciate in the suave musicmaking, but the transporting concert -- a presentation of the Washington Performing Arts Society -- said a great deal about the group's Austrian home base. For one thing, ghosts roam the Vienna streets and the town remains besotted with its past musical masters. The Artis Quartet carried scores of its most prominent residents, Mozart's String Quartet No. 14 in G (the first in the set of six dedicated to Haydn), Beethoven's beloved "Harp" Quartet and Brahms's haunting and lyrical A Minor Quartet, the second of three essays in the form. Oh, if only there were more time for some Schubert or perhaps Haydn himself. Too bad that Gustav Mahler never completed any string quartets, for they would surely have been program candidates. Vienna is nothing if not refined and polished, and such were the hallmarks of the Artis Quartet's playing. Here was a sound far from the revved-up, weighty and eccentrically detailed style increasingly popular among some younger American quartets. In the formal elegance of Mozart, the fluent expression of Beethoven and the tight musical arguments of Brahms, the Artis sound was cut straight from the cloth of the tailored and blended European quartet tradition. And maybe Artis's graceful phrasing and keen awareness of structure were musical equivalents of Vienna's ornate architecture and imperial atmosphere. Daniel Ginsberg. |
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