The String Quartet in New York City: Brooklyn Rider confirms it's alive and rocking

Norman Mailer once proposed that New York City should be made the 51st state of the Union, partly because it would thus retain more of its municipal revenues. I think that he also had in mind that the sovereign status of statehood would be in keeping with its role as the undisputed capital of an undisputed cultural super-power. Part of that reputation must be based on its ability to produce top-drawer ensembles such as Brooklyn Rider, whose gorgeous sound brought midsummer joy to Wigmore Hall. 

The quartet – Johnny Gandelsman and Colin Jacobsen (violins), Nicholas Cords (viola), and Michael Nicolas (cello) – presented a programme illustrative of the diversity of expressive gestures arising from the artistry of the physical ensemble, and from the vitality of the structural forms created by composers. Earlier in the day they had played two other recitals which explored repertoire associated with the iconoclastic bent of the metropolis, including works by Philip Glass, Jinan Azmeh and Reena Esmail.

Opening the evening’s proceedings was Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte, a piece responding to the Minuet and Trio in one of Haydn’s quartets. The range of expressive gestures that brought it to life reflected well the collage technique used to construct the piece, harmonic blocks interlaced with fragmentary themes overlaid on an asymmetric structure. The result might be thought of as the musical equivalent of a series of Rauschenbergian images portraying bewigged New Amsterdammers tripping the night away. It was elegantly played, as befitting its subject-matter.

Julius Hemphill’s Better Get Hit in Your Soul is an exploration of three themes by Charles Mingus, and part of a larger work paying homage to the legendary bassist. Brooklyn Rider’s take on it was a pen-and-ink sketch evoking “cats” jamming in a smoke-filled basement club, with Mingus’ bass a life-affirming throb. As presented, the sketch was not of a pristine, coffee-table-top crispness – it had been scrunched-up into a ball and then flattened out with the palms of the hands. The crunched chords and the sizzling glissandi were drawn with great intensity. 

Feeding on that intensity, Jacobsen’s BTT flew off the page with all the passion the group could muster. Bach and Cage turn up, via their acronyms, both visiting NYC during the 1970s and 1980s to sample the surge of downtown experimentation. Bach imbibes and inhales, being on a jaunt, but Cage takes mental notes for his next pontifical utterance. Jacobsen gives great reportage, and he and his colleagues set their seal with pride. Gershwin's Lullaby was the rarity on the programme: the work of a student, written originally for piano, it lacks any of the obvious markers that makes the composer’s work instantly recognisable. However, It’s still small voice of calm was beautifully captured by the group’s Brownie snap-shot.

Brooklyn Rider signed off with a superbly nuanced performance of Dvořák’s String Quartet in F major, “American”. With lightly-etched, elegant phrasing and stylish, rhythmic rocking, the group conjured up the evident joy that the composer must have felt in setting down such sounds. The players showed themselves to be as adept in watercolours as they are in pen-and-ink. As an advertisement the performance spoke volumes for their quiet, modest and undemonstrative approach to their art – a far cry for the unashamed self-publicist that was Mailer. As if to underline the distance from such an ego, Jacobsen’s arrangement of Little Birdie was played as an encore. The ensemble will be in town again in September; catch it if you can.