Starling Quartet mini-concert review

Tonight, totally on a whim, I went to a mini-concert of the Starling Quartet, the student honors quartet of the CMU school of music. I had simply by sheer accident noticed in my email inbox the weekly calendar and seen "Quartet" and decided to stop by. I'm a sucker for string quartet performances, and the last one I'd been to had been a concert by the Parker Quartet, the quartet-in-residence at CMU, on February 21.

For reference: the Starling Quartet consisted of Anat Kardontchik, Leonidas Caceres, Andrew Griffin, and Ana Isabel Zorro.

I went into the Kresge Recital Hall not having any idea what the program was. There weren't any programs around when I got there ten minutes early, and not many people inside either. Then people started coming in. Hey, this was the first day of finals at CMU, after all. Eventually about 25 people showed up in the audience. (About halfway through the concert, some guy started passing out programs. Before that, the violist announced what was being played.)

The concert lasted only about 40 minutes total, because no complete quartets were performed, just selected movements.

The first piece was the first and last movements of Hadyn's String Quartet in G Major, Op. 76, No. 1. Ha, I was glad they weren't playing the whole thing, because I had just heard the whole thing in February performed by the Parker Quartet! Anyway, the Starling Quartet performed the outer movements with real verve and alertness. I love this music. It's funny, for almost two decades I thought Haydn was boring, didn't bother to listen to much of his music, but now I find it so witty and delightful.

The second piece was Samuel Barber's famous Adagio for Strings, in the original string quartet version rather than the souped up string orchestra version. More precisely, this is the second movement of the three-movement String Quartet, Op. 11, by Barber. I have always preferred the original string quartet version, because it is so much more intimate and intense, the voices of just four individuals. I had never seen it performed live, so this was a special treat. And wow, I was impressed by the communication between the performers, the sonority of the harmonies, the emotion channeled into sound. The audience was so quiet that during the silence after the big climax in the music, there was pure stillness in the entire hall. I could not help but shed some tears while experiencing this music as it should be experienced, live, performed by four souls sharing it with each other and with the audience. Barber's masterpiece never gets old.

The third piece was the first movement of Mendelssohn's String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 13. The first and second violinists switched places for this piece. I'm not such a big fan of Mendelssohn, so I was not familiar with this piece, but it was very passionate and fiery, and allowed the performers to demonstrate a lot of virtuosity and intensity.

All in all, the little concert was a nice after-work treat, free of charge. I went away proud of these students who displayed so much enthusiasm, understanding, and feeling for some excellent music. I think anyone who lives near a university should now and then take advantage of free or cheap music performances on campus.