SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Haydn, Bartok, Schumann: Takacs Quartet, Joyce Yang, piano; presented by Cal Performances at Hertz Hall, University of California at Berkeley, 2.12.2007 (HS)

The breadth and variety of string quartet repertoire requires many different strengths, which is why most quartets excel at the music only of certain composers. Takacs demonstrated Sunday afternoon why it is special, lending the right buoyancy to Haydn's Op. 74, No. 1, terrific atmospheric touches to Bartok's String Quartet No. 5, and magnificent energy and a sort of rhythmic wildness to Schumann's Piano Quintet in E flat major, Op. 44. Pianist Joyce Yang aided and abetted them in the quintet.

The recital, presented by Cal Performances, was in the University of California's Hertz Hall, a smaller venue than Zellerbach with warm acoustics. This took some of the edge off of Bartok's astringent harmonies, but paid dividends in the Haydn, which opened the concert, and the Schumann, played after an intermission.

In the Haydn, the first three movements received graceful playing. The witty music, which bounces its rustic themes around from instrument to instrument, finally cuts loose in the finale with a vivace that was all the more exhilarating for the deft touches of the andantino and the menuetto that preceded it. In the opening movement, you could feel the camaraderie of musicians so familiar with one another that they could even imitate each other's timbres as the melodies caromed amongst the four instruments. The middle movements reveled in Haydn's unprepared harmonic changes and the sense of resolution as they returned to the home key, and the finale exploded like a burst of confetti.

The Bartok, by contrast, was all about instrumental colors. Cellist András Fejér and violist Geraldine Walther seemed to enjoy exploring how many different shades of dark they could weave under the uncanny sound-matching of violinists Edward Dusinberre and Károly Schranz. Each of the three main themes in the opening movement  developed its own tonal color, even when they recurred in the development and recapitulation.

The spooky night music of the second movement adagio molto came off like a gauzy painting in tones of gray, with occasional flashes of light, returning with more warmth in the mirror-image fourth movement later. The middle scherzo, with its irregular rhythms, interrupted these atmospherics with peasant-sounding, grounded fun, and the finale cut loose with even more abandon than the one in the Haydn. The musicians put their best deadpan face on the smirking interruption of the out-of-tune village folk ensemble passage near the end.

Judging by her contribution to the Schumann quintet, Joyce Yang may soon outgrow the "winner of the Van Cliburn competiton" tagline that shadows her everywhere she goes. She is a formidable talent who combines exquisite technique with a rock-solid sense of rhythm and a clear idea of how to shape a phrase. She makes a great chamber music partner, too, adapting seamlessly to the quartet's approach from measure to measure, phrase to phrase.

This was especially true in the remarkable slow movement, which starts out like a funeral march, then re-casts the same material against a burst of arpeggios from the piano before returning to the dirge. Yang's statement of the theme was exactly in sync with the quartet's, and the rhythmic interruption came as a splash of cool water. That was only a taste of what was to come in the scherzo, with its upwelling scales that lifted the music to a higher plane with every return.

This was mesmerizing music making from all hands.


Harvey Steiman