Borromeo Quartet, George Li, and Barry Shiffman at Rockport Music close 2024 Classical Season

Rockport Music: Borromeo Quartet with pianist George Li, and violist Barry Shiffman close 2024 Season at the Shalin Liu Performance Center

Sunday, August 25, 2024

Rockport, MA

Borromeo String Quartet

Nicholas Kitchen, violin

Kristopher Tong, violin

Melissa Reardon, viola

Yeesun Kim, cello

George Li, Piano

Barry Shiffman, viola

Johann Sebastian Bach:  Prelude and Fugue in D-sharp Minor, BWV 853

(arr. for string quartet by Nicholas Kitchen)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:  String Quintet in G Minor, K.516

Johannes Brahms:  Piano Quartet No. 2 in A Major, op. 26

Borromeo String Quartet (l to r) Kristopher Tong, Yeesun Kim, Melissa Reardon, Nicholas Kitchen

I cannot imagine a more triumphant season finale than this full-bodied concert featuring the Borromeo Quartet and pianist George Li. Bach and Mozart filled the first half. The closing Brahms quartet is one of the longest and most imposing chamber works in literature, lasting almost fifty minutes.  The Bach and Mozart cannot be termed “appetizers,” as their deeply plaintive, meditative, and, at times tragic outlines ended the first half of the evening in shadows, enlivened only by the final movement of the Mozart piece. The Brahms, though, was an ebullient saga that left the audience breathless in its wake. Not as often played as the G Minor Quartet, the A major is a work of monumental design:  It encompasses all the compositional techniques that capture listeners and hold them throughout. The mood of the second half countered the tragic hues and chromaticism of the first half.

Mr. Kitchen introduced each piece in his winning affable way, thus clearing a conceptual path for the work at hand. Bach preceded the classic era which developed the string quartet (and the all-important sonata form). Mozart, during his many visits with Baron van Swieten, transcribed some of Bach’s keyboard fugues fromThe Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2 (WTC II). He provided a transcription of the D-sharp minor fugue for string trio – a simple transference of parts.

In Mr. Kitchen’s arrangement for four players, he transcribed both prelude and fugue of BWV 853. The quartet texture is richer and more satisfying than Mozart’s trio transcription, and the prelude provides an interpretive challenge. The prelude, as conceived for keyboard, consists of a dotted melodic arc against repeated chordal accompaniment. Such writing does not seem a candidate for a string quartet’s voicing, yet this arrangement really works. The staccato articulation was connective and almost tenuto. The fugue is one of the more contrapuntally sophisticated fugues in Book I. The sinuous subject presents as usual, but then sections progressing with stretti, inversion, and augmentation make it a formidable listening experience. In spite of (or because of) Bach’s aggregation of contrapuntal artifice, his three-voice texture traverses a shadowy, melancholic terrain, with moments of delicate and poignant chromaticism.  Similarly, the quartet’s phrasing and expression seemed perfect throughout.

Barry Shiffman, viola and Artistic Director of Rockport Classical Music Festival

In Jan Swafford’s recent book, Mozart: The Reign of Love, he characterizes the Mozart quintet as the “most tragic work Mozart wrote.” Certainly, for three movements, the deep, unsettled anguish that drives this work is staggering. However, the G major concluding rondo provides a respite tempered with pensive, shaded touches.

The performers demonstrated, again, a full-bodied lyric ensemble. I missed not having the repeats taken in the first movement, but perhaps since the work is saturated in G minor, the repeats might seem oppressive. In the menuetto, the inner voices had much to say, while in the adagio, the whispery muted echoes of phrases served as the backdrop for the imitation of first violin with first viola. The final movement returns to G minor and opens with a pizzicato bassline, followed by the enlivened rondo.

George Li, Pianist

Mr. Kitchen, introducing the Brahms, demonstrated how Brahms’s opening theme in rhythmic and harmonic shape parallels the beginning of Beethoven’s G major piano concerto. It does not take long before the superpositions of duple and triple meters, luscious arpeggios, and stunning harmonic rhythms reveal Brahms’s language at its most characteristic. Pianist George Li was a passionate partner to the string trio, especially in the outer movements which were sunny, passionate and intense.  More compound rhythms of two beats playing against three are prominent in the second movement: the piano’s arpeggios growl and the strings sigh in its second subject. A gypsy-infused treatment leads brings back the classically paced opening.  The scherzo, in a quasi-baroque contrapuntal style, has an animated, furioso canon for a trio. In the final rondo all performers dove into the music with extraordinary brio. Mr. Li’s right-hand part, flying an octave higher than before. against a thunderous bass, was thrilling.

The Rockport Music Festival takes place in a remarkable, unique venue: the Shalin Liu Performance Center. Nestled in the seaside village of Rockport, Massachusetts, the hall is camouflaged in a Second Empire style building, and blends into the surrounding architecture. One side of this building, facing the Atlantic, is glass, allowing the sea and sky to be a background for the performers. From the modest exterior, it is surprising that the space can accommodate an audience of several hundred. Coming to this beautiful hall is almost worth the price of admission alone, but with this glorious chamber concert, being there became a treasured end of summer memory.