Here is the full version of my Thursday July 1 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Tuesday June 29, 2010 Juilliard String Quartet performance at the Martin Theatre of the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois.
Juilliard Quartet shows what might have been
New first violin Eanet to be leaving group after only a few months
From its founding at the request of the Juilliard School of Music’s composer-president William Schuman almost 65 years ago, the Juilliard String Quartet has been the gold standard of American chamber ensembles for many listeners. Its founding first violinist, Robert Mann, held his chair for more than half a century and was one of the few chamber artists to attain near-celebrity status in the musical and wider worlds.
The group has handled departures of its members, due to illness or changed interests, superbly, with the seven members who took seats since the first roster changes in the 1950s being uniformly excellent musicians. They each also fit fully into the ensemble’s signature strong sound, tough posture, and advocacy of Modernist composers as well as the standard repertoire. Samuel Rhodes has been the Juilliard’s violist since 1969, Joel Krosnick the cellist since 1974. Until this season, second violinist Ronald Copes with 13 years of service was the newcomer
So when University of Chicago alum Joel Smirnoff, former second violin and then Mann’s successor in the first violin chair, took the presidency of the Cleveland Institute of Music in 2008, all eyes were on the Juilliard as it searched for only the third lead player in its history. After extensive auditions, the group chose Nick Eanet, co-concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and former first violin in the Mendelssohn String Quartet. But Eanet's integration into the tight unity of the group was delayed by a broken wrist from an inline skating accident.
[The Juilliard String Quartet: Nick Eanet (from left), Ronald Copes, Joel Krosnick, and Samuel Rhodes. ]
Tuesday, just a few months after the new lineup gave its first official New York concert, the quartet announced that Eanet would be leaving the group after this season, due to "an acute digestive ailment" that would limit his ability to keep up a rigorous touring schedule.
Tuesday night at Ravinia's Martin Theatre, the Chicago area was host to the Juilliard's first performance following this surprise announcement. Perhaps this development, and its disclosure, accounted for some shaky intonation and a lack of blend at times in the fascinating Schumann A Major Quartet, Op. 41, No. 3, the type of unconventional work that is normally the Juilliard's bread and butter. Still, the middle two movements demonstrated the expected Juilliard intellectual digging and presentation.
Mario Davidovsky's 1998 Fifth Quartet, "Dank an Opus 132," is a deep exploration of the slow movement in Beethoven's great A Major quartet. In just 12 minutes, the Argentinean-American takes apart Beethoven's harmonies and reassembles them in raw and jagged ways. It's not so different from the composer's earlier works, and there was still an air of distraction in the playing.
I would never have predicted that a Mendelssohn quartet would be the highlight of a Juilliard program, but the D Major, Op. 44, No. 1, especially in its last two movements, found the group riding high and playing beautifully, as a collective and as individuals.
Eanet has a wonderful smooth and warm sound that both connects and contrasts attractively with the styles of his colleagues. The encore of the Menuetto from Schubert's A Minor "Rosamunde" Quartet, D. 804, gave an even better sense of what a wonderful unit this foursome could have become.
What do the three senior members of the group do now? New auditions, selection, and waiting for an invitee to clear his or her calendar to join them could take another couple of years and Rhodes and Krosnick might be ready to retire by then. Their contemporaries of the Guarneri Quartet, with a very different. hardly-changing personnel tradition, chose to disband and retire recently after 45 years. Or perhaps they could take a page from William Schuman and Bobby Mann and found and mentor a New Juilliard String Quartet. Whatever path its players choose, this is a great and historic ensemble at a crossroads.
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