Beethoven: String Quartet No. 16, Op. 135; Ligeti: String Quartet No. 2; David S. Lefkowitz: Green Mountains, Now Black. Quartet Integra (Kyoka Misawa and Rintaro Kikuno, violins; Itsuki Yamamoto, viola; Ye Un Park, cello). Yarlung Records. $26.99.
Eric Whitacre: The Pacific Has No Memory. Anne Akiko Meyers, violin; Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. AVIE. $8.99.
Music simply is. Even when created because of and tied to a specific occasion, even when composed as illustrative of literature or art or nature, music exists in and of itself, drawing attention and communicating – or failing to do so – on its own. This is why later generations were able to overcome the (largely manufactured) animosity between the Liszt/Wagner and Brahms “schools” and their respective followers, and to find both “storytelling” and “pure” music equally worthy. And it is why so many works continue to attract listeners unfamiliar with their genesis and even with the intentions of their composers: the music has something to say on its own, even if it is not necessarily what the composers themselves thought they were saying with it. Yet none of this stops composers and performers alike from trying to imbue specific pieces with specific meanings, and – in the case of some concerts and recordings – to try to select multiple works that collectively convey a particular impression. Indeed, attempted nonmusical (or supra-musical) communication is scarcely new: the last movement of Beethoven’s 16th and final string quartet is famously headed Der schwer gefaßte Entschluß (“the difficult decision”), after which the music is structured as Grave, ma non troppo tratto (labeled Muss es sein? and in F minor – “must it be?”) and then Allegro (labeled Es muss sein! and in F major – “it must be!”). And all this refers to – what, exactly? No one playing or hearing the quartet today needs to know that the philosophical thinking stems from a mundane dispute over payment for a subscription concert, with Beethoven himself originally jocularly adding the words Heraus mit dem Beutel! (“out with the money bag!”) but wisely omitting them from the quartet’s pages. Even the composer’s broader and far more thoughtful inclusion of language is insignificant compared with the quartet’s power to engage and involve performers and audiences in the music as music. Top-notch performances of Op. 135 reach out with a pure intensity that the members of Quartet Integra capture to excellent effect on a new Yarlung Records release. The slightly tentative opening of the first movement soon gives way to lyrical warmth that contrasts effectively with a lighter second movement that shares some similar stop-and-go rhythmic feeling. The performers thoroughly accept the Lento assai designation of the third movement, which at first seems almost static in presentation until, as it progresses, the reasons for Beethoven marking it cantante e tranquillo become clear and the movement truly sings and calms. And the finale, its attached verbiage notwithstanding, progresses strongly from chordal questioning – with particularly fine ensemble playing – to its far more relaxed, even genial main material. The result is a thoroughly satisfying performance that displays the quartet on its own – not as the last of the “the late quartets,” the context in which it often appears in recorded form, but as a work that communicates in and of itself without reference to external events or, for that matter, to Beethoven’s other pieces in the same form. The playing of the other two works on the CD is equally impressive, but the choice of this particular musical mixture proves rather odd and even off-putting rather than communicative in some sort of “meta” sense, as the juxtaposition is apparently intended to be. György Ligeti’s String Quartet No. 2 is one of those mid-20th-century works (1968) that can usefully display an ensemble’s technical capabilities but that fails to make anything but an intellectual connection with listeners – and seems, indeed, designed more for intellect than for anything more visceral. Portions of the designations of its five movements reflect intended emotional states – nervoso, calmo, furioso, brutale, tumultuoso, delicatezza – and the music itself does reflect those words to a considerable extent. But the work remains emotionally at arm’s length (to mix a metaphor), no matter how well it is played. It is played well here: among the impressive elements of this performance are the barely there opening of the first movement, the sense of disconnection in the second, the especially clear pizzicati in the third, the sheer strength of the bowing in the fourth, and the almost palpable sense of relief and relaxation in the finale. But all this is to what end? The overall effect is of a work that (unlike Beethoven’s) is very much of its own specific time and is evocative principally of the experimentation and sonic disruptions of its era – a period piece, in other words. But even the Ligeti is less time-bound and specific in its referents than Green Mountains, Now Black by David S. Lefkowitz (born 1964). Written for Quartet Integra, this composition has some intriguingly expressive elements and displays Lefkowitz’s thorough familiarity with Monteverdi, whose Orfeo and L’incoronazione di Poppea are among the building blocks of the 15-minute piece. But the work’s emotional heart rests in a specific contemporary event that affected a particular geographic area: devastating fires that burned portions of Los Angeles early in 2025 and that, as tragic as they were for area residents, had no significant impact elsewhere and will not be long remembered – surely not as long as Monteverdi’s music, whose expressiveness continues to communicate. There is no doubting the sincerity of Lefkowitz’s creation or its meaningfulness to him and to the California artistic community, nor is the heartfelt performance by Quartet Integra lacking. But this is a case where listeners really do need to know whence the music comes and what it intends to convey in order to appreciate it – and that is an unrealistic expectation for audiences in general and will be even less reasonable as time goes on.
To be sure, Lefkowitz is not the only composer who felt the effects of that natural disaster deeply and personally. Eric Whitacre (born 1970) built The Pacific Has No Memory around them as well, and Anne Akiko Myers and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra present Whitacre’s piece with deep feeling on a new AVIE recording. Indeed, Meyers’ emotive playing transcends the work’s concept and reason for being: it sounds like a wistful and sad nocturne for solo violin and strings, with the very fine orchestral playing adding to the communicative effectiveness of the solo part. Nevertheless, the piece’s concept involves considerable navel-gazing, not only through the geographical and temporal inspiration but also through the title, which Whitacre took from a line in a movie called The Shawshank Redemption and which will scarcely be meaningful to anyone unfamiliar with that film, and perhaps not even to viewers who do remember the movie. The Pacific Has No Memory lasts less than eight minutes, and it is hard to imagine who would want to spend the money for this CD – which contains nothing else – except for people personally affected by the events memorialized in the music. Ironically, when listened to simply as music and not contextualized as Whitacre and Meyers intend it to be, The Pacific Has No Memory is a work of considerable attractiveness. It is possible that when the situational circumstances underlying the piece have been forgotten, this work – perhaps retitled in a straightforward way, such as “Nocturne for Violin and Chamber Orchestra” – will prove to have some staying power, being enjoyed, its origins notwithstanding, as music that simply is music.
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