Too-similar programming drags down JACK Quartet at 92nd Street Y

The JACK Quartet gave an immaculate performance of a disastrously programmed concert last night at the 92nd St Y. While each of the pieces had its merits, they were too similar and too dependent on the same stable of cliches. And they all suffered as a result. 

Being first, Eduardo Aguilar's Hyper fared best. It was also the most original of the four works. In introductory remarks, Aguilar had commented that he wanted to “reimagine the choreography” of the string quartet. Sure enough, the players bowed in rectangles or circles on their strings, or bounced their bows vertically, instead of back and forth; at the end of the piece, all four players exited to corners of the house while making air sounds by swishing their bows violently like swords. As gimmicky as that sounds, it was in service of an interesting soundscape with a well-paced evolution. The piece began with the quiet sounds of bows rubbing on strings that were not allowed to vibrate. Snatches of pitch were allowed in gradually, only to disappear again. The bouncing bows started furiously and gradually slowed to a desert sparseness. 

The title of Seare Farhat's Aporias refers to a “self-containing contradiction”, according to the composer's remarks. (This bears a faint resemblance to the dictionary definition.) While the quartet played it with utmost conviction, this over-long work eventually sank under the weight of its own pretensions, dragging the rest of the evening down with it. The vocabulary of the piece could be described as ‘Elliott Carter and Morton Feldman had a baby,’ but without Carter's structural sense or Feldman's integrity. It came across as simply a repetitious catalog of late 20th-century clichés: the paper-thin senza vibrato pianissimo; the abruptly ending dissonant crescendo; the glissando tremolo; the isolated flautando harmonic; the unearned pregnant pause. The insistence on non-vibrato tone became wearing after maybe ten minutes or so. And did I mention that it was far too long?

Juri Seo's Three Imaginary Chansons, both an exploration of just intonation (“different ways of being in tune”) and a gloss on late medieval songs, also eschewed vibrato. There was more variety of texture and material here, with a good balance of the strange and the familiar. Subdued melodies alternated with violent, Bartókesque outbursts. Dance-like passages and virtuosic passagework followed slowly emerging chords. Seo, unusually among contemporary composers, is willing to repeat passages, allowing a first-time listener a better chance of grasping the material. She also has a sense of play, which I think I would have quite enjoyed had my patience not been already worn so thin by the Farhat.

And then it turned out that Anthony Cheung's Twice Removed (so named because three of its four movements were reactions to artworks that were themselves reactions to other artworks), receiving its world premiere, was treading exactly the same ground as Aporias. There was more variety; it was better paced than the Farhat; vibrato was very occasionally allowed to show its face. But it was still an endless succession of either violent or evaporative gestures separated by pregnant pauses, and it was impossible to hear it as anything other than ‘more of the same’.

The final movement, based on an essay about a mountain, was more continuous, and had a contemplative tone, a greater multiplicity of textures, and an appealing viola solo. Would there had been more like it on the program.