New York Classical Review

String quartets by 21st-century American composers might be a niche for some, but remains a fascinating genre. To gauge its pulse, “Voices Up!” at the Corrigan Conference Center at Fordham University was the place to be on Friday evening. The Cassatt String Quartet gave committed, informed performances of works by four composers who are reinvigorating and reimagining the form. 

The world-renowned Cassatt String Quartet was founded in 1985 and is currently composed of Muneko Otani, first violinist since 1986; founding member violinist Laura Jean Goldberg; violist Amy Galuzzo; and cellist Yi Qun Xu.

Jessie Montgomery’s Strum has become a staple of the string chamber repertoire (in both quartet and quintet versions). Montgomery drew on American folk traditions to create a narrative that begins with a nostalgic air and evolves into an ecstatic celebration. The players brought comforting warmth to its more reflective, lyrical moments. The pizzicati and strumming that course through the work were performed with exciting precision, and Strum ended with a perfectly timed unison pluck of the strings.

Violinist and composer Mari Kimura was present to explain the concept and technology she employed in her work Lambent Nishijin. The title refers to a traditional Japanese cloth woven with dyed threads produced in Kyoto. Lambent refers to a light that glows or flickers with a soft radiance, which describes this captivating, multi-media experience. The piece is in four short movements, red, yellow, green, and purple, with Kimura advising that the Japanese word for blue and green is the same, to avoid confusion.

Computer-assisted performances are routine these days, but the technology Kimura developed is cutting-edge and may have practical applications beyond music. Rather than images and sounds being generated at the whim of the computer, the players themselves are their source. They wear MUGIC® motion sensors contained in a specially designed glove, which simultaneously generates visual imagery projected on a screen and sounds that become part of the musical fabric. 

Although Kimura composed fresh, tuneful music, the technology was the attention-grabber in Lambent Nishijin. Perhaps that was the point of the piece, although creating sounds which would prompt such arresting visuals took imagination and skill. Sustained notes produced a small screen dot that would expand and take flight, just as magic carpets would later. Short stabs of pizzicati were echoed in computer-generated beeps. 

The less whimsical imagery was connected to nature. Kimura captured the emotions cast by videos of billowing clouds, the sea, and a sailboat gliding across the water with equal intensity in her music. The piece ended with four discs dancing, which gave way to flowers in the final measures. 

In introducing Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte, Otani evoked the Cassatt Quartet’s past. She said that Shaw was inspired to explore the genre after hearing the quartet perform Ruth Crawford Seeger’s String Quartet at La Mama. For Entr’acte, Shaw found inspiration in a far different work, the trio of Haydn’s String Quartet Op. 77, no. 2, in a performance by the Brentano Quartet. Shaw’s ten-minute work follows the traditional form of minuet and trio, but incorporates a wide array of sounds to bridge its classical and contrasting modern, chaotic qualities. 

The players employed virtuosity and inventiveness to create sounds that ranged from sighs and pizzicato chaos to repetitive triplets evoking the sound of a dripping faucet. The most remarkable were the barely audible airy whispers from Otani’s violin. Cohesion was provided by courtly themes plucked or bowed that evoked the Renaissance more than Haydn’s era. Xu strummed a particularly evocative melody on the cello that ended the piece.

Lawrence Kramer is a professor at Fordham, who also composes and is the director of “Voices Up!” He introduced his String Quartet No. 3 “Beginning with Time” by reading an English translation of Rimbaud’s ‘À Une Raison’ from Les Illuminations, which was the source of the title of the quartet. He also provided insights into its structure with two movements played in five-part alternation. Each reiteration of a movement returns to its starting point, an illusion to the poem’s title. 

Even armed with Kramer’s introduction, the structure of the quartet was hard to decipher at first hearing. Its charms lie in the melodies that meander through the piece and the intricate dialogues he composed. Otani was particularly effective in the solo violin melodies, but even more eloquent in dialogue with the other players. Ultimately such moments left a more lasting impression than the overall piece itself. 

“Voices Up!” continues with Robin Julian Heifetz’s “All of Us” 7:30 p.m. April 22 at Fordham University’s Corrigan Conference Center  now.fordham.edu