SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Other Links

Editorial Board

Google Site Search

Internet MusicWeb

Beethoven: Ying Quartet, Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 12.11.2008 (BJ)


Enterprisingly, the Seattle Symphony is celebrating the tenth anniversary of its fine Benaroya Hall with a six-concert series in which ensembles from the US, Canada, the Czech Republic, and France are playing all of Beethoven’s string quartets. In this second instalment, it was the turn of the Ying Quartet, four siblings who serve as quartet in residence at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY. Their program came close to spanning Beethoven’s entire career as a composer of quartets: it ranged from Op. 18 No. 3 in D major to the great E-flat-major Quartet Op. 127, with Op. 59 No. 3 in C major following after intermission.

Young as these three Chinese-American brothers and their sister are, I first heard them all of eleven years ago, at their debut in the quartet series of the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. The third “Rasumovsky” was on their program then too, and I was mightily impressed by their emotional panache, stylistic acumen, and masterful technique, and not least by the sheer fearlessness of their breakneck tempo for that work’s famous fugal finale.

They were impressive again this time around, but perhaps a shade less so. The playing was still authentically Beethovenish in its vigor, sensitivity, polish, and expressive commitment. Yet I felt there was a certain lack of true forward movement, which diminished the structural force and integrity of the music. And I think the reason for this lay in a balance of tone that favored Timothy and Janet Ying’s violins and Phillip Ying’s viola at the expense of the crucial lowest voice. Since the cellist, David Ying, showed in several passages that he is fully capable of strong, even explosive, playing, I am driven to wonder whether he was simply and understandably misjudging the acoustics of the recital hall in thus deferring to his colleagues.

They for their part sounded just like their old selves. Phillip, in particular, fashioned some richly-toned lines–as often happens in string quartets, moreover, the violist seems to be the “ideas” man of the group, and he introduced the program with some modestly charming spoken comments on the music and the group’s approach to it.

(But what, pray, is this that I read on the program page and in the notes? Within the first five words of his program note on what is commonly referred to with just acknowledgment of the work’s dedicatee as “Rasumovsky No. 3,” Melvin Berger makes two mistakes. “The subtitle ‘Hero’ (or ‘Eroica’),” he tells us, “refers to the last movement of the quartet.” Well, first of all, a nickname is not a subtitle, which word should be used only for a designation stemming from the composer himself. “Hero,” which I have never previously encountered in this context, is surely no more than a nickname, and as unnecessary a one as the similarly silly labels “Compliments” and “Liebquartett” attached to Op. 18 No. 2 and Op. 130 in the brochure listing of the series. There are quite enough pointless nicknames littering the repertoire to make the invention of new ones quite unnecessary. And secondly, “Eroica” is the Italian equivalent not of “Hero” but of “Heroic,” which might be a marginally less ridiculous moniker for this quartet if it needed a new one.)

“Heroic,” incidentally, might have seemed to some listeners a less appropriate term for the Ying’s take-no-prisoners assault on that vertiginous last movement than “foolhardy,” but I applaud the players’ refusal to compromise in the interest of mere safety. The occasional roughness that inevitably resulted from their exhilarating tempo evoked the composer’s inveterately uncompromising character just as accurately and thrillingly as anything else in a concert that, even in its less convincing moments, was always thoughtful and artistically rewarding.

Bernard Jacobson


^{Back to Top                                                    Cumulative Index Page}