Anxiety and Fear in Ideal Doses
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

It has already been a very good year for Antonin Dvorák. The American Symphony Orchestra opened its season with the “New World” Symphony. The New York Philharmonic offered an all-Dvorák opening night. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center featured the “American” Quartet on its initial tasting menu. And most recently the Bohemian master’s greatest piece of chamber music, the mighty Piano Quintet, was featured aboard Bargemusic this weekend.
The Vertigo Quartet (Jose-Maria Blumenschein and Johannes Dickbauer, violins, Lily Francis, viola, and Nicholas Canellakis, cello) was formed at the Curtis Institute in 2005 and is in residence for this coming season of the barge’s unique floating concerts. Their weekend program was presented with a great deal of technical dexterity and emotional intensity, which bodes well for a year of high-level performances.
The foursome began with Shostakovich, specifically the Quartet No. 7 in F Sharp Minor. As with many of this composer’s middle quartets, anxiety and fear tend to dominate a cold landscape of political repression and domestic privation. The group captured just the right aching sound for this almost unendurable suffering and dazzled with a section that contains many pinpoint fits and starts, which were all executed in remarkable unison.
It may have been a tactical error to follow such horror with the Sting Quartet No. 2 of John Corigliano. Mr. Corigliano is the only classic composer to have his face on billboards aboard the New York subway (in an ad for City University of New York, where he teaches). Listeners of a certain age might remember his father and namesake, the colorful concertmaster of Bernstein’s Philharmonic, and younger fans probably associate this composer with his score to the film “The Red Violin.”
His 1995 quartet is formed in a five-movement Bartókian arch structure and appears on first hearing to be devilishly difficult to play. Many of these difficulties seem to exist only for their own sake, however, not to serve some higher artistic purpose. The ensemble, this time with Mr. Dickbauer in the first chair, handled all of Mr. Corigliano’s challenges with notable aplomb, even if the aggregate sound and fury signified very little. Mr. Canellakis had said in his opening remarks that the piece was “a long, important work in the quartet literature.” It certainly was long.
Pianist Olga Vinokur joined for an impassioned reading of the Dvorák. This was zaftig music making, somewhat old-fashioned in style and particularly satisfying in melodic phrasing. Ms. Francis, who is also a violinist and a member of the Chamber Music Society Two stable, was especially eloquent in her statement of thematic material, and the viola solos in the Dumka — whence the old popular song “Nature Boy” — were just gorgeous. The blended sound of the quartet was exceptional, its coordination enviable. It was clear that the players are a group working consistently as a unit rather than having just met prior to this evening.
A word about Ms. Vinokur. Her pianism was excellent, but I sometimes wondered if she felt as good about it as did the audience. She seemed to hold back, and was quite noticeably self-effacing. The Dvorák Piano Quintet is a very Brahmsian work, however, and requires solid leadership from the keyboard and a good deal more bottom that she provided this evening. Although her phrasing and enunciation were fine, she seemed almost more an accompanist than a driving force.
One magical moment made this evening memorable. The quartet took Dvorak’s direction “furiant” quite literally in the Scherzo and showcased the movement as not only exciting but impressively precise. For a brief moment thereafter, the players, normally serious of visage, looked at each other and beamed, knowing that they had really nailed it.
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Dvorák’s contemporary, Edvard Grieg, was honored on the 100th anniversary of his death (Dvorák, born two years earlier, died in 1904) with a unique program at Scandinavia House on Thursday evening. The two composers were similar in many respects, not the least of which was their shared gift for evocative, nostalgic melody. The audience at the Victor Borge Auditorium was treated to a one-man show with many special musical guests.
Actor Rolf Kristian Stang has made a career of portraying Norwegian historical figures including Leif Ericsson, Edvard Munch, and Henrik Ibsen. For his own composition, “My Name Is Grieg, Edvard Grieg,” he offers the composer as an old man who has recently received in the mail a copy of his own biography. It is this unsettling experience that triggers a flood of memories.
Many of those recollections are musical, as Grieg asks us to imagine various situations from his past that are then evoked by recordings. Thus we hear a superb performance of the Symphonic Dance No.2 conducted by Mariss Jansons and a vintage pressing of “With a Waterlily” sung by Kirsten Flagstad, whose easily recognizable voice is well worth the price of admission.
Mr. Stang as Grieg tells amusing stories, such as how Grieg was offered $25,000 by Sam Wanamaker to open his new department store in Philadelphia (he declined, clearing the way for Richard Strauss to receive only $6,000), or how, as a diminutive fellow of 15, Grieg was placed on the knees of his classmates at the Leipzig Conservatory and serenaded with German lullabies. The textual, as well as the physical, resemblances to Hal Holbrook in “Mark Twain Tonight” are unmistakable.
There is other music as well. Frederick Delius, who wrote a number of songs for Grieg’s wife, Nina, is represented by an old Thomas Beecham recording of “Norwegian Sleigh Ride,” and folk music of the region is performed on a Hardanger fiddle. The fourth wall is nonexistent in this involving production, Mr. Stang having entered from the back of the audience, apologizing for running late and stopping to schmooze with audience members along the way, one of whom turned out to be Celeste Holm, and so it was perfectly natural for him to ask two young people to come onto the stage to perform.
Heather Johnson, whom I remember fondly from the world premiere performance of “Haroun and the Sea of Stories” at City Opera a few seasons ago, sang two of Grieg’s songs from the great cycle Haugtussa, itself evocative of Ms. Flagstad for listeners of my generation. She was remarkably full voiced in the Rendez-Vous and suitably playful and dexterous in the song of the goats playing around the country maiden. Her able accompanist was John Lidal.
Janet Norquist was Nina, the disembodied voice who gently guides the composer through his daily routine, with her insistence that he take his pills, leading to an endearing explanation allowing both the actor and the audience an intermission. One could certainly make the argument that this type of theater treads dangerously close to the line that separates sentiment from sentimentality, but such similarity in texture and mood, being so close to so many of Grieg’s own immortal works, allows the net result to ring emotionally true. Certainly the crowd seemed to enjoy its flowery sweetness, as did the actor. Besides, with so much beautiful music going on, who’s afraid of the drama police?