In what seems to be the theme of the week here on Life’s a Pitch, I’d like to give my own glowing review of Vivien Schweitzer’s review of the Emerson String Quartet. I actually worked on the ESQ concert at Joe’s Pub, so throw that layer on the fire, too.
First, word up to The New York Times for approving the double review of a concert at Joe’s Pub and a concert at Lincoln Center the following evening. What better opportunity to explore the similarities and differences in both the concert-going and performance experiences than reviewing two concerts (of the same artist/group) in drastically different spaces, in a single review. Could this mean the start of The Era of the Concept Review? Here’s hoping.
Second, I sincerely enjoyed Schweitzer’s casual but smart and clean style. Quoting WQXR radio presenter Elliott Forrest’s analysis of the ESQ’s 32-year career as a group (“like a marriage, but without the sex”), likening listening to chamber music at Avery Fisher to “voyeurism” and – a subject near and dear to my heart – commenting on the rigid concert-going experience at the usual halls:
These low-key settings offer newcomers and cognoscenti a chance to
relax away from the sometimes crotchety atmosphere of major halls,
where concertgoers may become hapless victims of the Stare — the
withering look of disgust directed at a listener who can’t stifle a
sneeze or inadvertently claps at the wrong moment. Before a concert at
Avery Fisher Hall last spring, a stern-faced patron admonished me not
to “treat the place like a living room.” My sin, apparently, was
placing my jacket incorrectly on my seat.
Love the “apparently” and love the guy who lectures the Times critic.
The review also gave context and background to chamber music itself without being preachy. While the word “chamber” is in the genre name, we often forget the art form’s origins in our contemporary presentations. (Ironically, of course, a place should be treated as, or should literally be, a “living room” when chamber music is being performed.)
The concert [at Avery Fisher] finished with an amiable rendition of Schubert’s beloved
“Trout” Quintet, with the pianist Jonathan Biss and the bass player
Timothy Cobb. This work can make even curmudgeons smile, and the
performance illuminated its cheery optimism and soothing melodies.But
it probably would have been even better at Joe’s Pub, a space more in
the spirit of the private hausmusik concerts for which Schubert and
Mozart composed chamber works. Mozart wrote his arrangement of fugues
from Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier” for Sunday-afternoon gatherings at
the Vienna home of Baron Gottfried van Swieten, a connoisseur who
championed the music of Bach (which, surprisingly, was given short
shrift at the time).
While The Bartok and Beers Movement isn’t exactly breaking news anymore, the juxtaposition of reviews of the same artists at Avery Fisher and Joe’s Pub in The New York Times actually is. It takes a village to change an industry, as they say.