Renaissance String Quartet
The season debut of Chesapeake Music’s popular Interlude concert series marked the return of the New York City-based Renaissance String Quartet – friends for a decade or more who honed their skills at the Juilliard School and the prestigious Perlman Music Program. The foursome – violinists Randall Goosby and Jeremiah Blacklow, violist Jameel Martin, and cellist Daniel Hass – were joined in Sunday evening’s chamber concert by pianist Zhu Wang and Chesapeake Music’s co-artistic director, violist Catherine Cho.
Goosby made his Ebenezer Theater debut two years ago, featured with piano wunderkind Wang in a memorable “Stars of the Next Generation” concert. Goosby returned later in 2023, performing with members of the internationally acclaimed Orion Quartet and other seasoned musicians as part of the annual Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival.
The Renaissance foursome played the opening night program with major assists from their former teacher and mentor, Cho, who fulfilled Mozart’s two-viola requirement for his famous String Quintet No. 4 in G Minor. And Wang brought his keyboard virtuosity to bear in Brahms’ masterpiece, the Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34.
The concert opened with what Goosby promised was a piece probably no one in the audience had heard before, though it was composed about 90 years ago. Price’s String Quartet No. 1 was almost lost forever, rescued just before the demolition of her former summer home near Chicago in 2009 – nearly 70 years after her death. It was discovered alongside dozens of other scores that had never been published or performed publicly – many of which had been recorded and played in concert. The 17-minute, two-movement string quartet begins with gentle flourishes that build subtly toward a boldly declarative finish. The highly romantic second movement, with a charming theme introduced by violinist Goosby, accented by pizzicato changes of tempo, leads to a dreamy sequence that brings to mind a tearfully tender lullaby.
The Mozart quintet features his signature repetitive mini-themes throughout which go from typical G minor pathos in the allegro opening to dire suggestions of danger and melancholy in the second – played with animated conviction by cellist Hass and amplified by the dual violists. The third movement adagio features mournful exchanges expressively delivered – as if in conversation by violinists Blacklow and Goosby with violists Cho and Martin. The final movement presents a conundrum ranging from dirge and lamentation at the start before switching abruptly to G major ebullience in an it’ll-all-work-out finale executed with optimistic flair by this engaging quintet.
Following intermission, the best of Brahms was performed with the gusto and commitment it deserves by the Renaissance String Quartet plus one – pianist Zhu Wang, a multi-award winner on an international scale.
Written in his early prime years, ages 29 to 31, and first performed four years after he started, the piano quintet is often referred to as the “crown jewel” of Brahms’ chamber music career. But it hardly came easy. Brahms composed it first as a quintet with two cellos and next as a two-pianos sonata, before settling on what became the piano quintet standard – string quartet plus piano.
The allegro opening in sonata form makes near equal use of all the instruments in a unison theme. And throughout, the piano and strings play a similarly equal role. The second movement, andante, presents a storytelling theme that again, as in the Mozart quintet, brings the piano in expressive conversation with the strings. Wang carries the burden with calm and aplomb as he is one player engaged with four others in a piece that Brahms once wrote for a pair of pianists.
By the third movement we begin to expect something’s afoot thematically as a hint of intrigue and danger emerges in an apprehensive piano segment delivered by Wang accompanied by a plucking heartbeat strummed by cellist Hass.
In the finale, apprehension turns to tumult as the tempo builds into presto intensity, thunderously deployed by each of the fever-pitch five, culminating in a fiercely intense climax to this stirring chamber masterpiece.
A notable footnote: Goosby, who’s become something of a Chesapeake Music audience favorite, also performed with fellow quartet musicians and chatted with students Thursday as part of the BAAM (Building African American Minds) Afterschool Program, and again Friday at Mace’s Lane Middle School in Cambridge.
CHESAPEAKE MUSIC INTERLUDE CONCERT
Sunday evening, Sept. 27, Ebenezer Theater
Prager Family Center for the Arts, Easton. chesapeakemusic.org
Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic now living in Easton.
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