Molinari Quartet

i attended the Molinari Quartet's performance at Pollack Hall last night. the concert was one in a series for the MusiMarch 2006 programme.

this year, MusiMarch is called Des impressions - music from Scandinavia and Canada. last night's concert featured works by Penderecki, Ratniece, Thoresen, Sokolovic, and R. Murray Schafer. this is all 20th century music which, often, can sound quite bizarre. to watch it being played is even more unreal.

the Penderecki and Ratniece struck me as very tentative pieces, full of very quiet glissandos on the strings. it seems the composers were very hesitant in their expressions - perhaps that's what they intended. Ratniece's piece, Alvéoles, was inspired by various textures and colours of honey. I could certainly picture the honey dripping throughout.

Thoresen's piece, Pyr Aionion, was more interesting to me. he seems to use a hybrid between a major and minor second between two specific degrees in the minor scale (that is not to say that this piece is in a particular key either, but it was certainly more tonal than the first two). it definitely sounded nordic, and i liked the feel of it. it was more solid-sounding to me.

Sokolovic's Blanc Dominant, based on Molinari paintings, was again very atonal. i was pleased to be able to recognize a recurring theme in some of the variations.

R. Murray Schafer's Winter Birds was more interesting to me, given that it is inspired by cold winter days in northern Ontario. you can hear the solitude of existence in that environment, which must surely be akin to winters in the scandinavian countries. no wonder the scandinavians were included with the canadians in this year's programme. in this piece, you can hear a variety of birds skillfully mimicked by the strings.

the quartet is quite skilled. to play this music, you need to be able to play your instrument in the classical way, but you must also learn how to do the weird things the composers call for.

i saw the cellist use the bow on the tail piece (the wooden bit at the bottom of the instrument that pulls the strings tight), and all four at some parts were clicking the sides of their instruments with their fingernails. in some cases, they were hitting the wooden part of their bow against the body of their violin.

they whistled, and they spoke. they used the edge of their bows to get a metallic sound on the string. they pizzicatoed, out of sync with each other. and all of this is written in the score. i wonder what the score looks like... how do you notate a diminished-major second (which is not quite a minor second)? how do you notate a tail piece note? how do you know what pitch you're going to get?

still, with all the skill and expression, i have difficulty enjoying this level of atonality. they're good at what they do. i just don't have a way of fully appreciating what they do just yet. but it's definitely good exposure into the possibilities of movie-music writing. and i'm all for that.