Kronos Quartet speaks to our time with edgy new works at Carnegie Hall
The line for admission went around the corner to 57th Street Friday night as the Kronos Quartet came to Carnegie’s Zankel Hall in typical fashion, with a fistful of New York premieres and one world premiere.
Inside, the electronically amplified ensemble—violinist David Harrington, cellist Paul Wiancko and two new members as of last fall, violinist Gabriela Díaz and violist Ayane Kozasa—rocked the music of Sun Ra with clashing glissandos to the sound of taped speech and a jazz singer, in Jacob Garchik’s effective updating of the radical jazzman’s Outer Spaceways Incorporated.
Garchik gave more tender handling to Nina Simone’s classic version of “For All We Know,” version of the J. Fred Coots standard “For All We Know,” in which the “High Priestess of Soul” abandoned J. Fred Coot’s original melody and took off in a fugue-like fantasy. Suavely playing non-vibrato, the group supported Kozasa’s viola as it evoked the singer’s smoky tones.
Serbian composer Aleksandra Vrebalov, the 2024 Grawemeyer Award winner and a frequent Kronos collaborator, gave a ten-minute sample of her finely worked, lapidary style in Gold Came From Space. Composing in 2023 to honor Kronos on its 50th anniversary, Vrebalov incorporated bits of pieces she previously composed for Kronos into this eventful piece. Entering in a cloud of high harmonics, the music swung between passages in jumpy mixed meters, a mournful viola solo with pizzicato cello, and powerful intertwining lines before closing on an affirmative unison note. (Vrebalov’s piece, like all the others in the program’s first half, was making its New York debut.)
Social and political concerns are part of the Kronos brand, and were felt throughout the evening. Composer Vrebalov, violinist Harrington said, wished to dedicate this performance of her piece to the students in last fall’s campus demonstrations “who struggle to create a humane and lawful society.”
Following immediately was “Ohio,” rocker Neil Young’s fierce response to the 1970 shooting of war protesters at Kent State University by National Guard troops, in a slashing, electronically pumped arrangement by cellist Wiancko. Kronos newcomers Díaz and Kozasa made their presence felt, digging into the song’s original guitar lines.
Kronos turned to a longtime collaborator, Terry Riley, for Kiss Yo’ Ass Goodbye, another 50th anniversary piece and a Carnegie Hall co-commission. Starting with Sun Ra’s track “Nuclear War,” Riley improvised the piece at the keyboard with Sara Miyamoto writing it down, and then Wiancko arranged it for quartet. Social unrest lurked here too, in a tape of crowd sounds and a man’s voice looping “get back, get back” in a rhythmic riff, while the quartet played darting phrases, then syncopated chords. In its counterpoint of musical and speech patterns, the work proved far more sophisticated than most pieces that seek to wed demonstration footage with music.
The program took refuge in nature with Viet Cuong’s Next Week’s Trees. A poem about visiting ponds in the woods, with reflections on both life’s uncertainty and its propulsive force, inspired this lively assemblage of electronic and string notes, whose circling harmonies gave it the feeling of a chaconne. The message of this sensuous, serene music seemed to be that even as patterns repeat, nature’s beauties are forever renewing and changing.
The evening’s world premiere, Elja for Hardanger fiddles and tape by Benedicte Maurseth and Kristine Tiogersen, ventured into Norwegian folklore for a picturesque and engrossing three-quarters of an hour, constituting the program’s entire second half. Co-composer Maurseth, a noted folk fiddler and singer, provided an authentic presence onstage with the Kronos musicians, whose instruments included a Hardanger viola and cello built for the occasion by the Norwegian luthier Ottar Kåsa. (The folk instruments resemble familiar violins, etc. but have extra strings for resonance and elaborate inlay decorations for looks.)
Classical composer Tiogersen was presumably responsible for the evocative mix of taped nature sounds—wind, birds, insects—with long, shining string double-stops that made an eloquent case for preservation of the windswept Hardanger plain and its ancient culture. The work’s eight movements, played without a break, were named for natural features (the waterfall Elja, the lake Tinnhølen), wildlife, and folk dances (bull, springer, halling) of this remote, beautiful region.
Maurseth led the playing and occasionally sang in a strong, vibratoless voice as the folk-style melodies rubbed against the drone notes in vibrant dissonances. The final halling (with an additional composing credit for Lars A. Skoglund) brought this “distant journey” to an animated close.
Composer Tiogersen joined the group onstage for well-deserved bows. (Composers Vrebalov and Miyamoto did likewise for their pieces earlier.)
Lighting designer Brian H. Scott lit the stage in a different color for each piece and threw the occasional spot on a featured player. Scott Fraser designed the quartet’s rock sound mix and other effects. An anonymous audience member contributed a colossal sneeze during a pianissimo passage of the Norwegian piece.
Carnegie Hall presents artists from the Juilliard School in “A Tribute to Meredith Monk,” an all-Monk program of music and dance, 7:30 p.m. Thursday in Zankel Hall. carnegiehall.org
Leave a Comment
