Did you know that there's a wonderful string quartet in San Diego—besides the San Diego Symphony String Quartet? That's right, a second technically polished, musically sensitive string quartet lives and works in America's Finest City. The problem is, unless you're a music major at San Diego State, or a fortunate high school student, you probably haven't heard this group.
Since September 2007, the four talented lasses who comprise the Cecilia String Quartet have been in residence at San Diego State; they have performed locally dozens of times since then, but if you have a 9-to-5 job, good luck trying to hear them play. Their SDSU gigs invariably occur at noon, and their other performances tend to be at other schools and libraries, venues not noted for their acumen in public relations.
Many thanks, therefore, to La Jolla Music Society for presenting this queenly qualified quartet at an hour when working adults could experience the Cecilia's sterling sounds. Their Saturday evening concert at Schulmann Auditorium attracted less people than the typical LJMS Sherwood Hall offering, but what the audience may have lacked in size was more than compensated for by the crowd's enthusiasm. They certainly scored points in my book by programming something other than Classical-era Viennese composers. While Wolf's Italian Serenade and Schumann's Third String Quartet are not exactly overlooked repertory, San Diego performances are infrequent enough to make their presence on this program genuinely welcome. In the middle of this was the U.S. premiere of an okay string quartet by American composer Liam James Wade.
What's not to like about the Cecilia String Quartet? Throughout the concert, their uniform ensemble work, warm tone, and precise intonation never faltered. This uniformity was especially striking in the jerky stop-and-start rhythmic passages of the last movement of Schumann's quartet, and the relentless syncopation of the second theme of the first movement.
Playing first violin in Wolf's Serenade, Min-Jeong Koh was appropriately teasing. You could say she was a coy Koh (try repeating those last two words as fast as you can!). The group captured the happy as well as the playful attitude of the Serenade.
Sarah Nematallah assumed first violin duties in the quartets by Wade and Schumann; her tone was bigger, more lustrous and extroverted than Koh's, although it's tough to compare the two since their repertory was so different. Whereas Koh was more subsumed into the entire ensemble, Nematallah confidently stood out, wooing listeners with her firm yet luscious playing.
Cellist Rebecca Wenham was a solid anchor to the group, possessing a comparably warm tone to mirror Nematallah's. Wenham's sound was similarly vibrant and fully round, whether soloing or simply laying down a firm foundation to her colleagues. While violist Caitlin Boyle's contributions in the 19th-century quartets may not have been obvious, when called upon to solo she did so admirably, and was an essential component of the group's impressive gestalt.
The Cecilia Quartet seems destined for a comfortable career, playing the usual string quartets flawlessly, hitting all the notes properly, all the rhythms precisely, and always in tune. This in itself is no small achievement. However, one thing kept coming to mind as I listened to them, and that is, they could really stand to take some more risks. Let me quote from one of the greatest risk-takers of the 20th century, Morton Feldman:
"He has worked hard, learned his craft. Ergo, he is a composer. A professional. Like a doctor. But there is that doctor who opens you up, does exactly the right thing, closes you up—and you die. He failed to take the chance that might have saved you. Art is a crucial, dangerous operation we perform on ourselves. Unless we take a chance, we die in art."
Feldman was writing about American composers, but what he said is also applicable to performers. The Cecilia Quartet has plenty of potential to be a good professional quartet. They'll make some recordings, get good reviews, sell tickets to their concerts. But if they push themselves just a little bit further—put a little danger in their repertory, and let it rub off on their playing—they can rise to top of their class. They can be a great quartet. Speaking of Feldman, his music would be a good challenge for them. Some other composers who came to mind that evening were Zorn, Carter, Ben Johnston, Xenakis, and George Crumb. Contact with any of these composers' music could transmute the Cecelia's playing into that extra something, that je ne sais quoi that separates the best from the merely good.
They're on the right track commissioning a composer for a quartet. Liam James Wade wrote a quartet for these ladies, ostensibly based on their career and his interactions with them. Although the work has the somber title of "String Quartet no. 2," it has the nickname "The Canadian" (not exactly the sort of nickname to convey excitement, unless you're talking about hockey or clubbing baby seals).
I was unfamiliar with Wade's music. He's already in his thirties, which in my book means he's no longer a "young composer;" one supposes that his musical language is fairly well-formed, if not solidified by that age, and a handsome, competent language it is. His quartet owed much, it seemed, to Shostakovich (not the hysterical, paranoid Shostakovich, but the classicist aspect of that composer), as well as popular music (the latter pretty unsurprising in American composers these days). Wade even has a mission statement (although back in my student days we would have called it a "manifesto") to encourage "creation without negativity," to "support music of the soul…that originates from a place of honesty and personal authenticity."
This is not to suggest that Wade's music is all sunshine and puppy dogs; the second movement of his quartet was angry and dramatic, with a lyrical, mournful contrasting section, and the final movement was laden with slow, octatonic gloom (and what appeared to be a quote at the end—Schubert's D minor quartet?). The fourth movement is a tango, but a rather by-the-numbers classical remake of a tango.
Wade's quartet was well-received. It was competently written. Yet again I must fall back on the wisdom of Morton Feldman (from the same essay, Boola Boola), on describing the typical American composer:
"Our young man goes on. He writes a piece occasionally. It is played occasionally. There is always the possibility of a performance on the Gunther Schuller series [if alive today, Feldman might use Suzanne Vega's NPR series as his example]. His pieces are well made. He is not without talent. The reviews aren't bad. A few awards—a Guggenheim, an Arts and Letters, a Fulbright—this is the official musical life of America."
Wade could be on a trajectory to earn himself these achievements. But is that all he wants? Does he want to create music that people listen to over and over again, that moves them, changes their lives, that performers want to play and revisit for years to come?
Joan Tower once gave me some terrific advice when I was still trying to push notes around. "You're a very careful composer," she told me after hearing tapes of my music. "You should take some more risks. They'll seem like risks to you, but because you're so careful, they'll end up not being as risky as they first seemed."
Stretch yourself, Mr. Wade. Put a little more danger in your music. Take a chance.
For a copy of the program, click here.
Cecilia String Quartet web site:
http://www.ceciliastringquartet.com/home.html
