At Tanglewood, the Skride Quartet excels in a rare piano and strings evening

Making its American debut, the Skride Quartet tackled its chosen repertoire with a level of assuredness that made one forget that this is such a young ensemble. The two Skride sisters have, of course, been playing together for a very long time and each of the instrumentalists involved brought a significant experience as both soloist and chamber musician, but the results were still impressive.

The evening’s hero was not so much the phenomenal violinist Baiba Skride but her younger sister, Lauma, the pianist, mainly because her instrument plays such a predominant role at many junctures in the works selected. Her interpretation, especially in Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G minor, which can be considered, for all intents and purposes, a veritable concert for piano and string trio, was marvelous. Lauma Skride balanced feeling and introspection with true clarity and lack of any hint of showiness. With few exceptions, during the “coloratura” passages in the third movement, her “soprano” was a model of phrasing and delicate but firm articulation.

Mozart’s K478 is one of the earliest ,if not the first, attempt in the genre. It’s in G minor (the same key as the String Quintet K516 or the Symphony no. 40) a tonality that was, for the composer, both a means for probing the inner depths of the soul and a framework for expressing unbridled urgency. With its exploration of various sound combinations, with its lyricism and its desire to give lower strings not just an accompanying role, the work goes beyond the conventions of the Classical idiom. Full of technical difficulties, it is also an example of chamber music moving away from just being a divertissement for amateurs. The four instrumentalists, in perfect agreement, as they were during the entire evening, underlined well the music’s instability, with the first movement’s opening theme constantly impeding the development’s construction, and with transitional passages in the Rondo seeming to take a life of their own.

As a preface to the Mozart, the ensemble played the single movement Mahler Piano Quartet in A minor, a fragmentary opus composed while the composer was a student at the Vienna Conservatory. Rediscovered in the 1960s, this confidently written work is clearly inspired by Brahms and Schumann. Even with its hints of melancholy and resignation, this minor piece barely represents a premonition of things to come. It was an excellent showcase, though, for the ensemble’s cohesion and for Baiba Skride’s gorgeous sound, easily coming through in just the few measures of the violin cadenza.

The evening’s pièce de résistance was scheduled after the interval. Brahms’ First Piano Quartet is one of the composer’s early masterpieces. From the dark and lyrical first movement to the fiery and exuberant last, the music is imbued with a symphonic quality that this rendition certainly brought forward. The difficult to maintain balance between piano and strings was never in doubt. Textures had transparency. In a score where individual voices often assert their independence, the cello (Harriet Krijgh) and the viola (Lise Berthaud) confidently introduced new thematic material in the complex sonata form underpinning the Allegro. Overall, there was an emphasis on underlining the non-obvious: the tension beyond the perceived energy and lyricism in the first movement; the mysterious in the Intermezzo; the adventurous harmonies and the rhythmic challenges not just the sheer virtuosity in the famous Rondo alla Zingarese.

Stable piano quartets are a pretty rare phenomenon, way less ubiquitous than pure string ensembles. First and foremost, the repertoire is much more limited. Secondly, too many times piano and strings evenings are just vehicles allowing individual virtuosos or string ensembles to explore works beyond the ones they are playing regularly. In the global high-standard performances schedule there is definitely a niche and it would be wonderful for the Skride Quartet to fill it in the coming years.