Tag: carpe diem

Carpe Diem joins forces with guest violist

On By Sam JacobsonIn columbusLeave a comment

Carpe Diem String Quartet
Jacob Shack, viola
First Unitarian Universalist Church
Columbus, OH
December 16, 2023

Tucker: Ravenous
Bunch: String Circle
Brahms: String Quintet No. 2 in G major, Op. 111

Carpe Diem String Quartet began their December program in enterprising fashion with two contemporary works – including a world premiere. The premiere was a product of their 15 for 15 initiative, in which they have commissioned fifteen works to honor their fifteenth anniversary. Composer Akshaya Avril Tucker was on hand to introduce her piece entitled Ravenous, inviting the audience to picture a place without life – and then to imagine its return to life in ravenous regrowth. The piece followed the trajectory suggested by those remarks, beginning desolate, almost disembodied, steadily growing in vigor and fervor.

Guest violist Jacob Shack – who currently serves as associate principal of the Baltimore Symphony – was introduced for the next two selections. Kenji Bunch – also a violist – is a composer whose folk and populist influences abound, readily apparent in the 2005 work String Circle. Described as something of a chamber music “jam session”, the opening Lowdown began gently but not without rhythmic thrust. Syncopations decorated Shuffle Step, while the languorous central Ballad seemed to suggest Gershwin’s “Summertime”. Pointillist pizzicato made Porch Picking a fun listen, and the appropriately titled Overdrive closed the piece in exciting fashion.

Brahms’ String Quintet No. 2 was almost symphonic in heft – it was quite striking how the addition of just a single viola buttressed the quartet. Tremolos underpinned a warm cello melody, and the quintet did much to bring out the richness of the scoring, cutting into the heart of the spacious opening movement. The Adagio was beautifully resonant, with elegant ornamentations atop a stately chordal procession. Brahms’ individual stamp wandered through the penultimate movement, a downtempo affair in lieu of the more traditional scherzo; a further favorite device of the composer came in the Hungarian inflections of the vigorous finale. Shack gelled with Carpe Diem like an old friend, and the diversion into the string quintet literature was most welcome.

Seasonally appropriate, the evening concluded with a generous helping of ten or so holiday selections in skillfully crafted arrangements for quartet.

Carpe Diem offers a heartfelt afternoon of string quartets

On By Sam JacobsonIn columbusLeave a comment

Carpe Diem String Quartet
First Unitarian Universalist Church
Columbus, OH
November 5, 2023

Gabriella Smith: Carrot Revolution
Mayer: String Quartet in G minor, Op. 14
Vali: CHAS
Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 9 in E-flat major, Op. 117

Last weekend marked the opening of the Carpe Diem String Quartet’s first season with violinist Sam Weiser. The varied program was a a sign of good things to come, balancing contemporary works with earlier ones – one of which has been long forgotten. A wonderfully energetic and exciting opener was had in Gabriella Smith’s Carrot Revolution, a 2015 work written for the Aizuri Quartet. Rarely does a string quartet sound so percussive! The body of the cello was repurposed as a percussion instrument, and guttural sounds from the second violin did much to explore a vast range of textures, given with an unwavering rhythmic intensity.

With a life spanning 1812-1883, Emilie Mayer was an exact contemporary of Wagner and Liszt. Her String Quartet in G minor was an intriguing discovery, evidencing Mayer to be a highly accomplished and skilled musical voice. Marked by a recurrent sighing gesture, the first movement was sweeping and passionate. A slow movement was quite touching, the dotted rhythms of its main melody elegantly articulated. Despite ending firmly in the minor, the finale was largely and a warm and genial affair. Carpe Diem’s committed advocacy has piqued my interest in exploring more of Mayer’s body of work.

The second half opened with the premiere of CHAS, a moving work by Reza Vali written in memory of Charles Weatherbee. Vali has had a long relationship with Carpe Diem – violist Korine Fujiwara spoke fondly of a 2012 festival of Persian music in which quartet and composer first collaborated; several recordings of his works have followed. The letters of CHAS were spelled out in music (using the German nomenclature), as individual entities and then layered on top of each other, creating an aura of inward contemplation. A viola melody perhaps evidenced the composer’s Persian roots in its inflections, and another statement of the titular theme in the quartet’s highest register was of striking effect in its otherworldly harmonics.

Shostakovich was another composer who employed the spelling of his name (DSCH) as a musical theme, and it was his Ninth Quartet which closed the program. The 1964 work was cast in five movements, alternating fast and slow, almost in the manner of a Baroque suite. Carpe Diem gave it a poignant reading, evident from the searching, wandering theme which opened. The second movement Adagio was particularly mournful, while the following Allegretto was Shostakovich at his blistering, sardonic best. The finale spanned more than twice as much time as any of the preceding movements, a quantity which cellist Ariana Nelson introduced as a “200 bar crescendo”, and indeed, it brought the recital to a bold, uncompromising finish.