People Are Talking: Jerusalem Quartet

by Jim Leija

What did you think of the Jerusalem Quartet concert? Which piece of rep was most interesting to you? How did the Jerusalem Quartet concert compare to last week’s Takács Quartet concert?

Jim Leija is UMS Director of Education & Community Engagement. He's an alumni of the University of Michigan College of LSA, School of Music, Theatre & Dance, and School of Art & Design. Jim lives in Ann Arbor with his partner Aric and two dog-children named Olive and Maisie.

The intermezzo from the Brahms is my early candidate for the highlight of the year.

Kudos also for touring with the Kopytman. I'd never heard of him before, but that quartet was worth hearing at least this once. Yeah, it's kind of second-rate Bartok or Shostakovich with a little klezmer thrown in, but it held up well in this program, I thought.

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Oh, and by "second-rate Bartok or Shostakovich" I mean distinctly not "third- or fourth-rate". My comment above doesn't really capture how much I enjoyed it, which was a lot.

Still love that Brahms intermezzo, though. Wow. I was just listening to the Amadeus Quartet's old recording of it from the 1960s, and it's okay, but the Jerusalem was just inside that music tonight. Wonderful.

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Name a group with tighter ensemble playing, performances more observant of the appropriate styles, with sweeter tone and gutsier attacks! Pretty hard, eh? This is the top, one of the finest ensembles you will find in the world today. (Its performances contrasted well with the crudities we encountered on the steps of Rackham!)

These four men did not exactly make life easy for themselves with the opening composition, as they dove headlong into that characteristic Mendelssohnian busyness. Talk about tight ensemble! The Kopytman is hard to accept the first time around; neighbors expressed their skepticism. Some fellow commentators heard Bartok and Shostakovich. I believe that Kopytman has been listening to a lot of Stravinsky. The piece is episodic – filled with stubborn assertiveness, whispered conspiracy, derisive ghostly glissandi, striedent dissonant complaints, percussive staccato notes. A lot of Q and A in this piece.

Brahms was played warmly, but not sentimentally. I predicted an encore by Haydn, and we got it – dearer and more moving than I expected, practically left me in tears.

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