Featuring the Girsky String Quartet and images by Pablo Picasso
The Arts, capital ‘A.’ In our line of work, we refer to this broad category early and often. If a STEM curriculum is good, a STEAM one is better (this is a fact!). But chamber music itself occupies a rather specific corner of the Arts. We favor small rooms, small combinations of instruments, and perhaps go so far to consider our music ‘absolute,’ i.e., having no specific meaning other than sound itself. The listener can make of it what they will. Performers, too.
But what happens when chamber music emerges from its corner into the Arts more broadly. The 4th String Quartet of American composer Ned Rorem presents a fascinating opportunity to explore whether or not a piece of chamber music is necessarily absolute. Initially, Rorem based each of the 10 movements of this quartet on a different work by Picasso, and gave each movement the title of the painting or drawing that inspired it. Within a few years of the premiere, however, Rorem became dissatisfied with the idea of his music being perceived as representational, and he removed the titles from the movements. The third movement, originally titled Acrobat on a Ball, became ‘III: Very fast’— English for ‘III: Allegro molto,’ a tempo indication common to canonical classical works, at once specific and vague, therefore versatile, and ultimately “meaningless.”
What to do. Honor the original intention, and include the Picasso titles? Or honor the later revision and suppress them? Because you deserve a full festival experience we’ll do both. And we’ll even show the Picasso drawings and paintings at the center of all the fuss. We’ll have you guessing “was that the Minotaur or the Basket of Flowers? The Head of a Boy or the Death of a Harlequin?” Or was it simply, Very fast? The answer to all of these questions is unequivocally, ‘Yes!’ Helping us engage all your senses is The Walls Winery, whose selection of wines will make sure your senses of taste and smell don’t feel left out.
Ned Rorem (1923-2022)
String Quartet No. 4 (1994)
I. Minotaur
II. Child Holding a Dove
III. Acrobat on a Ball
IV. Still Life
V. Seated Harlequin
VI. Head of a Boy
VII. Basket of Flowers
VIII. Self Portrait
IX. Three Nudes
X. Death of a Harlequin
Artists: Girsky String Quartet — Natasha Bazhanov, violin; Timothy Christie, viola & moderator; Artur Girsky, violin; Rowena Hammill, cello