Ives Quartet - Performance Review

The Bay Area-based Ives Quartet comprises four chamber music lovers who enjoy what they do and convey their delight to fortunate audiences.

Last Monday night, violinists Robin Sharp and Susan Freier, violist Scott Woolweaver and cellist Stephen Harrison turned on the musical charm at Copia, delighting a small but spellbound audience with an imaginative program that included Haydn, Britten and a seductive salute to jazz.

Formerly in residence as the Stanford String Quartet since 1983, this ensemble departed Stanford University in the fall of 1998 to seek greater artistic independence. The re-named Ives Quartet performs a home season concert series in the Bay Area and also tours throughout the United States.

For their wine country debut, members of the Ives Quartet chose to begin the performance with one of the best of Haydn's mid-period quartets, "No. 32 in C Major (Op. 20, No. 2)."

The rich textured opening of the work proved immediately inviting, especially in this intimate space -- a 270-seat auditorium with lively acoustics, yet not overly so. This is an ideal venue for acoustic instruments, hence perfect for chamber music ensembles.

A unique Haydn capriccio blended baroque and classical styles in the same movement, done most sensitively by the performers. The light, insightful articulation in the fugal finale proved a real joy.

The ensemble playing allowed for enjoyment in Haydn's inspiration. The Ives Quartet is fully worthy of the composer's inexhaustible invention.

Thomas Oboe Lee is a jazz flutist and music teacher at Boston College. If Lee's 10-year-old work, "Seven Jazz Studies," is the yardstick by which we measure his talents, then he's a first-rate composer as well.

"Seven Jazz Studies" incorporates tributes to four remarkable musicians -- a pair of jazz pianists, Horace Silver and Bill Evans, composer/performer Antonio Carlos Jobim and one of the world's greatest bassists, Jaco Pastorius, whose manic depression led to his death at 35 in 1987.

The work begins with a prelude reminiscent of a tuning exercise and slips easily into a sound that is uniquely Silver, the hardbop grandpop, whose "Doodlin'" and "Sister Sadie" come to mind. An melancholic interlude precedes a witty waltz in the Evans vein, and the salute to Jobim -- a cello pizzicato providing the rhythm while remaining strings trot out a beautiful melody that Jobim would have loved. The assertive punk funk groove that was Pastorius is represented before the ensemble chimes in with a foreboding postlude that, perhaps, speaks to a musical style yet to come. The musicians' insights brought an ideal combination of authority and warmth to this creative piece.

The musical voice of Benjamin Britten is a highly original one. One never feels his music is derivative. This voice is that of a sophisticated man of culture -- his texts derive from Henry James, Herman Melville, Wilfred Owen, even medieval poetry. His music is imaginative, melodic and charged with taut emotion. He is probably the greatest English composer since Henry Purcell.

Britten's valedictory "Quartet No. 3 (Op. 94)," with its rarefied atmosphere and ethereal slow movement, is simply brilliant -- a classic work in the repertoire. With a nod to his friend Shostakovich, the Burlesque is splendidly robust. And the long final Passacaglia -- which incorporates themes from his opera, "Death in Venice," and concludes with a musical question -- was sustained by the ensemble with deep concentration and reverence. This strongly characterized reading was both warm and polished, and certainly deeply expressive.

The Ives Quartet is a most impressive ensemble. I, for one, hope to hear more of them.

In light of the sold-out performances of Chamber Music in Napa Valley, I can't believe so few chamber music fans turned out for the Ives Quartet at Copia. Do this audience disappear when fair weather sets in? Despite the low turnout, Copia officials will continue to offer chamber music events, hoping to build an audience for these programs. And, yes, the Ives ensemble will return, thank goodness.

Ives Quartet
Performance Review

A brilliant performance of diverse music by Ives Quartet

Ives Quartet Performance Review

A brilliant performance of diverse music by Ives Quartet

Ives Quartet
Performance Review