Quartet opens CMH season

By Ruth Bingham
Special to The Advertiser

Tousled and damp, the audience scurried into Paliku Theatre on the Windward Community College campus Monday for the Galliard String Quartet season opener.

The program proved to be an interesting contrast in styles.

Ever humble Haydn, the world's greatest living composer when he composed Opus 76, remains the genre's master.

Beethoven, great by his own admission, contributed the quartet's core repertory and, some would say, its greatest works as well.

And Stravinsky changed classical music forever, his clever, effective "Three Pieces" being one of his more self-conscious attempts at avant-garde writing.

The Galliard quartet shifted smoothly between styles, with cellist Karen Bechtel providing engaging, informative introductions to each piece. In fact, Bechtel provided a firm foundation for the entire concert. While most musicians can carry a melody well, innate musicality reveals itself in the drudgery: the drones, the background notes repeated over and over, the filling out of chords, etc. Bechtel played melodies beautifully, of course, but she also made support parts sing, and that was a joy to hear.

In theory, a quartet is four equal voices matched in style and tone quality, but that is more difficult to find than one might expect.

The Galliard String Quartet was a "three-plus-one," or even "two-plus-one-plus-one" quartet. Bechtel and violist Mark Butin shared similar timbres and approaches: warmer, more robust, more personalized. First violinist Claire Sakai Hazzard's tone was cooler, more delicate, more abstract. And second violinist Hung Wu vacillated between the two, with a warmer tone yet a more abstract approach.

Although there was little musical interaction between parts (handing off motifs, echoing, commenting, etc.), the quartet had generally close rapport, sharing nuances of interpretation. That rapport may deepen if they experiment with trading the lead part between violinists, as many quartets do.

The occasional roughnesses — Hazzard's intonation, weaker inner voices, conservative interpretations — were overshadowed by delightful passages. Their blend and balance in the lullaby-like opening of Beethoven's third movement was excellent, and all four chose the philosophical reading of Beethoven's last movement.

Correction: The Chamber Music Hawai'i season opened in September. The Galliard String Quartet, which is part of Chamber Music Hawai'i, gave its first performance of the season Nov. 10. A previous version of this review incorrectly said the performance was the first of Chamber Music Hawai'i's season.