Daedalus String Quartet, a youthful ensemble that has been playing together since 2000, took its name from on of western civilization’s oldest collection of stories, the Greek myths. The quartet emphasizes Daedalus’ creation of the Labyrinth and his invention of a pair of wings that he used to fly to freedom.
This must be the way these musicians see their art: as a complicated structure, a difficult craft, but also as a source of liberation. The Daedalus Quartet presented three of those complicated structures to a full house at Edmond Town Hall last Sunday afternoon.
The members of the quartet are brother and sister violinists Min-Young Kim and Kyu-Young Kim, cellist Raman Ramankrishnan, and violist Jessica Thompson.
The February 10 concert began with an early Beethoven quartet (String Quartet in G Major, Op 18, No 2), which was designed to recapitulate and celebrate the chamber music of Vienna around 1800 for an audience that would pick up all the allusions to pre-classical works, Haydn quartets, and other 18th century forms.
The quartet earned its later nickname “the complimentary quartet,” from its elegant, courtly theme, which seems as welcoming and respectful as the most gracious host. A brief, very intense ‘Adagio’ that recalls similar passages in Haydn’s late quartets follows, but it soon gives way to a brisk allegro.
The next movement begins with a delightful, witty scherzo, and continues to pick up speed through the last movement, ‘Allegro molto, quasi Presto’ – a fast finish with a flourish. In this very accessible quartet, Beethoven shows that he has mastered all the 18th century forms.
The next work on the program, Leos Janacek’s String Quartet No 2, “Intimate Letters,” was very different. Not only was it written more than 100 years after Beethoven’s quartet, but it has a “program” – a script. Before Daedalus began to play, Raman Ramankrishnan gave an unforgettable introduction to the work and its connection to Janacek’s life.
In 1917, at a spa, the 63-year old composer met and fell in love with Kamila Stosslova, who was 38 years his junior. Both were married, she had two sons, and they lived in cities far away from each other. Theirs was necessarily an epistolary romance. The passionate affair went on for more than ten years, inspiring the music of Janacek’s last decade. He died in 1928, less than two months before the premiere of Intimate Letters.
Mr Ramankrishnan is convinced that the relationship was one of artists and muse – yes, Greek mythology is back to haunt us once more. As the cellist put it, “The affair was probably all in his mind,” because what an artist-muse relationship needs is distance, (whether caused by age, marital status, geography, or all of the above). Janacek wrote to Kamila every day, and sometimes he wrote her four times a day, much to his wife’s consternation.
Why all the gossip? It has been written into the quartet. Each of its movements corresponds to a letter from Janacek to Kamila. The first describes to moment they met. The second re-creates their first kiss (which, Mr Ramankrishnan reminded the audience, may have been imaginary). The third, which is the most melodic, and most abstract, centers on Kamila, who is represented by the viola, and imagines her as pregnant with his child, giving birth to a son, and then wondering what kind of life the child would have. The final movement is a great yearning and fulfillment.
Mr Ramankrishnan’s lively talk relaxed and intrigued the members if the audience, and prepared them for a difficult work that was probably unknown to most of them. It certainly made people listen more closely to music that might not have appealed to them on first hearing. Very few people, I imagine, failed to listen to the second movement to find out how passionate, or how real, that kiss was.
This is a very demanding piece to listen to. It has no real development or contrapuntal structure; its forms are created through the juxtaposition and repetition of blocks. Having given the audience a narrative thread through Janacek’s labyrinth, Daedalus Quartet then flew its listeners over it on wings of their refined, beautiful playing.
After intermission, something quite unusual happened. For the first part of the program the first violinist was Kyu-Young Kim, but after the break it was his sister who took the first chair.
The second part of the program consisted of a single work, Brahms’ String Quartet in A major,, Opus 51, No 2. This, the second of Brahms’ three string quartets, was completed in 1873, but the composer may have written and destroyed as many as 20 quartets before publishing even one.
The quartet begins with an ‘Allego non troppo’ movement that manages to be sweeping and melancholic and charming almost simultaneously. The ‘Andante moderato’ second movement begins in a plaintive and gentle manner, but shifts to a second subject which features dramatic leaps and tremolos. The movement closes quietly, and seems to dissolve rather than end.
The next movement, ‘Quasi minuetto, moderato’ has the violins and viola playing close together, verging on dissonance, over the cello’s drone bass. The finale, an exuberant piece with an assertive opening statement, builds upon the melodic pattern of the Minuetto and plays briefly with its themes. The quartet comes to a swift and decisive end.
This was a very rigorous program, and the audience responded to Daedalus Quartet’s superb playing with a standing ovation. The following day the quartet presented a School Outreach Program at Reed Intermediate School, at which they met with some 200 string students. Those who attended Sunday’s concert know that the members of the Daedalus are not only wonderful musicians, but also gifted teachers. Anyone who can introduce a string quartet by saying “We’re having a blast playing this music” will have the ears of both preteens and grownups.