Farewell to the Guarneri Quartet - Peoples' Symphony Concerts

In a rather unusual programming move, Peoples' Symphony Concerts have presented the Guarneri String Quartet twice this season - they led off the Festival Series at Town Hall in November, and tonight they played a concert at Washington Irving High School as part of the Mann Series.  Easy explanation for this: the Guarneris are hanging it up after 45 years on the boards, and it is fitting and proper that they give one last performance for both the midtown and downtown Peoples' Symphony audiences.

In recent years, I have come to think that the Guarneri was well past its prime, still playing with fire but not quite the technical brilliance to do justice to everything they were playing.  On an emotional night like tonight, one puts the critical perspective on hold a bit and surrenders to the feelings.... and the feelings were well served.  The Janacek "Kreutzer Sonata" Quartet and the Dvorak "American" Quartet were both rendered with all the fire and passion one could wish, and if things were a bit rough-hewn at times, well, that goes with the territory.  The Mozart intervening (K. 421) was much too romanticized for my taste, and I lost interest part of the way through - although the failings of the venue on this occasion undoubtedly contributed to the general feeling of drowsiness in the hall at that point.  (It was an unseasonably hot day in NYC today - temps into the mid-80s - and they did not have air conditioning at WIHS.  In addition, for some reason they couldn't dim the lights during the concert, and the place was fuller than usual.  Put that all together and we had a very hot and humid hall, and by the time we got to intermission, there were lots of folks who seemed to be drooping...)

Ending with the Dvorak was perfect.... and responding to the audience's enthusiastic approval with two encores was perfect as well.  They did not announce the encores from the stage, and I don't know the string quartet repertory well enough to do more than guess.  Both sounded like Haydn to me - a slow movement and a fast finale - but I couldn't be sure.

Herewith, a fond farewell to the Guarneri String Quartet.  They've had an honorable run of almost half a century, have certainly been one of the dominant chamber music ensembles in the U.S. during the second half of the twentieth century, and have given great pleasure and inspiration to millions of listeners over that time, for which we offer grateful thanks.  Now we will just have their recordings as a memento, but there are many fine ones, especially their collaborations with Arthur Rubenstein and Richard Stoltzman, and their celebrated Barber and Ives Quartets.