SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Mendelssohn, Gabriela Lena Frank, Beethoven: Brentano String Quartet, presented by San Francisco Performances, Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, 5.3.2008 (HS)


Gabriela Lena Frank's music reveals a fresh voice, listenable but not afraid to wander into pungency when it's called for, highly rhythmic and atmospheric. At least that's what it sounds like in Quijotadas, a five-movement work commissioned by the Brentano Quartet, which played it stylishly Wednesday. That this new music easily held its own on a program with late works by Mendelssohn and Beethoven speaks volumes for this California-born composer.

Frank was born in 1972 across San Francisco Bay in Berkeley, her mother of Peruvian-Chinese heritage, her father a Lithuanian Jew, nice to know because these cultural strands inform her music. She also marks the 20th century composers Alberto Ginastera and Bela Bartók as inspirations; you can hear in her music the Argentinan composer's rhythmic vitality and Iberian roots, the Hungarian's spare voicings and tart harmonies.

The inspiration for this music is Cervantes' Don Quixote, but Frank points out in a composer's note that quijotadas has entered the Spanish language to denote extravagant delusions. Although some of the movements in the quartet make specific references to episodes in the story, you don't need to know that to appreciate the way she adapts traditional musical forms to the emotional content. They are extravagant without being fussy or overly complex.

A bucolic feeling seeps into the first movement, Alborada, in which first violin Mark Steinberg and second violin Serena Canin engage in a sort of hornpipe duet, pungent with dissonances reminiscent of Bartók's but in an entirely Spanish vein. The second movement, Seguidilla, finds Nina Maria Lee strumming on her cello like a big guitar and violist Misha Amory adding rhythmic flourishes against a florid tune. The third movement, Moto Perpetuo: La Locura de Quijote, builds from a quietly rhythmic start into a tour de force of a climax, and the next, Asturiana: La Cueva, offers spacious harmonies and a yearning melody. The finale, La Danza de Los Arrieros, alternates between violent outbursts and a sense of poignant resignation. It ends on quiet phrases that somehow carry the echoes of the old knight's vestiges of nobility.

It's 25 minutes of beautiful music, and the Brentano clearly enjoys playing it. It also seemed to inspire their most cogent playing of the evening. In contrast, both the Mendelssohn String Quartet in F major, Op. 80, and Beethoven String Quartet in E Flat Major, Op. 127, got clean and thoughtful performances, but neither one raised me out of my seat.

The Mendelssohn's somber tone set up the Don Quixote piece well, and it made a lovely opener. The Brentano lavished graceful playing on this music, even if it missed the wrenching quality it can deliver.

Beethoven fared better. Every detail fell neatly into place, and it was rewarding to sit back and follow the quartet's lead to find something unexpected around Beethoven's corners. The Brentano found real serenity in the slow movement and joy in the finale. Beethoven avoids a big finish here, which puts the onus on the musicians to give us enough of a lift along the way to compensate for that. They got close, if not quite there, and thus the music that lingered in the mind an hour later was Frank's.

Harvey Steiman


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