Daedalus Quartet, May 12, 2006

The Daedalus Quartet, which as we know is the official quartet of the Spam-O-Matic, began the Library of Congress' season in 2005 by playing a program featuring a Mozart string quintet in collaboration with a distinguished violist, and they ended the Corcoran Gallery's "Musical Evenings Series" (dumb name) exactly the same way on May 12, 2006. I'm sure they were doing other things in between as they toured this fabulous Earth in which we live, but a duo of Mozart quintets is a good thing indeed — to say nothing of the pleasures of a double dose of Daedalus.

The Corcoran's Armand Hammer Auditorium is a beautiful-sounding little hall, in which circa 200 seats set low to the ground and not very far back surround a promontory of stage on which performers do their thing; for chamber music, it means extraordinarily immediate sound and uniformly excellent views. It also mixes flagstone with Grecian-style columns and public school cafeteria-style speakers and random ornate American flag, a jumble somewhat surprising for an auditorium in an art gallery. But when the lights are low, all you're doing is bowing down to the music, especially when a quartet with a huge sound (like the Daedalus) is playing its heart out.

The concert was red meat for yours truly: Mendelssohn Op. 44 no. 1, Bartok's third, Mozart's last quintet (E-flat, K. 614). The program notes made a big deal about how Beethoven is not present in Mendelssohn's Op. 44, which happens to be completely wrong in my view: Look at how the ridiculously high-energy first subject of the first movement, the first violin playing a heroic tune in skipping rhythm, yields to the hushed legato homophony of the second subject. Contrasts that sharp were, at the very least, not routine until Ludwig laid his stuff down.

The Daedalus excels at integrating vast disparities like that into a musical whole, and every moment of the first and last movements (which have most of the big ole contrasts) was gripping in their performance; they did particularly well switching between playing like a quartet and playing like an orchestra accompanying first violinist Min-Young Kim, who in turn ran agreeably roughshod over the musical texture when asked to. In the middle movements, both strange, slower episodes, I sometimes wished they would back off their insistent forward pulse, especially in the trio part of the Menuetto, when Min played the beguiling solo slithering a little too quickly for me to fully take it in. But their finely judged ensemble playing still made all the mysterious harmonies vivid. And as a critic, I have to dislike something — it's my job!

I have no quibbles with their performance of the Bartok, for which Kyu-Young Kim took over the first violin role and also played the role of presenter, noting that the quartet enjoys playing the piece because they get to fight each other during the coda. He further noted that he and his sister Min have been practicing this particular activity for much of their lives, at which point Min playfully attempted to punch his shoulder. Note to musicians wondering how to engage audiences: This kind of stuff makes the quartet seem composed of approachable human beings (which it is). Anyway, much of the Bartok is indeed combattimento, with some rough humor when a folk melody gets the crap beat out of it, but (as Kyu noted) there are also eerie nightscapes, and the whole thing is compressed beyond belief. The Daedalus played alertly and precisely, meanwhile throwing themselves into every note with incredible commitment; it was a pretty shattering performance.

They were joined for the Mozart after intermission by a man who's played the Bartok 3 as well as anyone: Roger Tapping, former violist of the Takacs Quartet, which is only the quartet most immediately responsible for my interest in classical music, due to some performances back when I was 11 at the University of Maryland. So I like him. Appropriately, K. 614 begins with a kind of fanfare for the violas, played with bravado by Tapping and Daedalus violist Jessi Thompson (I am always happy to give props to my friend Jessi), which is then taken up by the rest of the players in what for Mozart is a riot of motive-driven counterpoint. Here, as throughout the quintet, the Daedalus and Tapping perfectly combined the general Mozartean imperatives of grace and balance with the drive and dazzle of the unusually abstract music that Mozart actually wrote here. The slow movement, a radiant set of variations, here attained an almost blinding beauty: pure-toned violins and violas refracting gorgeous harmonies with Raman Ramakrishnan's cello underneath providing a frame and nudging them along. Or, as I said after we were all done clapping, "Super-nice!" Which is a pretty good description of every Daedalus concert I've attended, actually.

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