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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2010 > November > 19 > Entry
Review: The Miro Quartet
The Miro Quartet is always worth watching. On Thursday night at Bates Recital Hall a healthy audience fought the chaos of parking, but were rewarded with the chaos and serenity of Beethoven.
This is Miro’s second concert in a series that will stretch over the next six years as they tackle all of Beethoven’s 18 string quartets.
A concert featuring a single composer can be draining. The tendency is for the listener to take sides, comparing one piece to the other, and there’s rarely an effective musical palate cleanser. This wasn’t quite the case, until the finale of “Op. 130,” which became a little long.
This was a long work by Beethoven, with five movements already. So when he wrote “Grosse Fuge,” a 20 minute work, as its sixth section, his publishers chopped it, and he wrote a shorter end piece.
At the end of a long concert, it seemed they had a point. Length aside, “Grosse Fuge” is an ungainly dance, and though entertaining, it was a harsh blow after “Cavatina,” the delicate fifth movement. Daniel Ching’s violin gorgeously rendered the theme, with sul tasto bowing (near the fingerboard) whose tone was impossibly beautiful and served as the evening’s highlight.
Indeed, set between dark, but sublime chords one one side, and a long rock opera on the other, Ching’s embodiment of serenity was a powerful reminder of Beethoven’s capacity for beauty and discordance. It can be a sort of bitter medicine, but Miro’s selections had effectively pulled us between light and dark all night.
In the opening piece, “Op. 14, No.1,” the fun and bright work often felt danceable, even as the winding violin parts land at a dozen false endings. This must have been high humor back in the day, and the conceit works still.
The “Op. 95” (or “Serioso,”) brought out a mania that recalls Napoleon’s rise to power, which Beethoven viewed as betrayal. It veers from much of his work, balancing bursts of passion with dissonant asides.
And “Serioso” especially brought the Miro’s strengths to light: gentle, pitch-perfect harmonies, enviable tone and brilliant balance, especially from Ching, whose violin seems always to be at the right volume.
Josh Gindele’s cello often felt like the quartet’s nimble fulcrum, which allowed for wonderful interplay between the instruments.
The encore was a graceful version of the Lento Assai from “Op. 135,” leaving an audience satisfied enough to overcome the frustration of any exorbitant parking tickets.
Luke Quinton is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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