The Guarneri String Quartet: After 34 Years, They're Nearly Perfect

There was no shuffling of programs. No peeking at watches. No glancing at the hairdo of the woman across the aisle. When the Guarneri String Quartet came to Boston last Friday, they held an entire audience in captivating. The effect was a feeling of anticipation that made it seem as though you were not in Jordan Hall, but in a Sony Theatre. As patrons sat with their necks outstretched and their shoulders leaning forwards, they resembled an audience that might have been anticipating Bruce Willis to defuse a bomb or Keanu Reeves to board a bus--not four smallish string players on the verge of completing a crescendo. And yet it was the very creation of anticipation by those four smallish string players that elevated the concert from music making to story telling. Adhering to Haydn's tenet that a modern string quartet "should engage the mind as well as the emotions," the Guarneri Quartet played a repertoire that alternated between being reflective and impetuous, sensual and contemplative. A standing ovation that included innumerable smiles and several open mouths spoke the result.

The Guarneri String Quartet has been hailed as "one of the world's most elegant chamber ensembles." The quartet, founded in 1964, has the distinction of being the world's oldest string quartet to feature the same original players. And, as you might imagine, 34 years of playing together reverberates in the Quartet's sound.

Among the two violins, viola and cello, there is a sense conveyed that goes beyond clarity and sparkle, beyond coloration and eloquence. There is a sense of oneness. It is a unity that is conveyed in moments when the ensemble sounds not like four distinct instruments, but like one single voice that is guided by the same rhythmn and timing--and more importantly, by the same vision and spirit. What is remarkable is that this doesn't come at the sacrifice of the quartet's many personalities. Somewhere between the pauses and rests, between the crescendos and dimenuendos, the players' personality seeps through. And while there is an intrinsic level of formality in the performance of any string quartet (underscored by the tuxedos of the musicians and the gilded architecture of the halls they play in), the Guarneri String Quartet employs no formality that stifles the honesty and candidness of their personality. As each musician performed with ease and comfort, the second violinist, John Dalley even allowed himself to beam with a smile in some of the quartet's more magical moments.

Many of these moments emerged in their first piece, Haydn's Quartet in D Major, Opus 20. The second movement, Un poco adagio affectuoso brought a confluence of musical constraint and emotional effervescence. In giving the upper melody to the cello, the bass line to the viola and a flirtation of rising and falling scale passages to the first and second violins, Haydn's piece created a mood that the quartet conveyed as sad, thoughtful and full of wonder. While the fourth movement, Presto e scherzando presented a direct contrast--with its expulsions of happiness in the form of harmonic and melodic unpredictability--there was, nonetheless, room for moments of sensitive contemplation that the Guarneri String Quartet used in making the piece as cerebral as melodic. Their second piece, Bela Bartok's String Quartet No. 6, presented (as those familiar with Bartok can imagine) a very different effect. Bartok regarded the string quartet as "a laboratory of advancing musical ideas." In this spirit of experimentation, Bartok tested different principles of tonality and deviated from a traditional harmonic structure. The Guarneri String Quartet gave an interpretation of Bartok's experimentation that seemed chaotic, disconcordant and--in Bartok's spirit--utterly exquisite. A stream of notes on high E rang with a sound that was reminiscent of fingernails against a blackboard with all of its pierce and none of its bite--creating a musical chill that began by leaping onto your arms, creeping up your neck and resounding with a shiver that carried all the way through the piece's four movements.

Although their third and final piece, Debussy's Quartet in G minor, Opus 10, lacked focus and feeling in the first movement, the quartet quickly recovered--and by the second movement, Assez vif et bien rythme, played a sound that (like its French direction would suggest) was lively, rhythmic and lyrical. But perhaps more importantly, it was fresh. Despite the practice that first violinist Arnold Steinhardt characterizes as "hours and hours of brute labor," the quartet did on Friday what makes them renowned: they conveyed spontaneity. The result was a sound that through rehearsal did not become tenderized and beaten, but remained surprisingly raw and palatable.

The Guarneri String Quartet has long enchanted its patrons. The Dallas Morning News recently described them as being "really quite perfect." And although the creation of music--of an art based upon interpretation and perception--can arguably never reach a state of perfection, one thing for certain is that last Friday in Jordan Hall, the Guarneri String Quartet came about as close as any string quartet can.