The Morgan Library and Museum presents Rush Hour Music in J. Pierpont Morgan’s Library: Beo String Quartet in Review
Jason Neukom, violin; Andrew “Gio” Giordano, violin (& whistle); Sean Neukom, viola;
Ryan Ash, cello
J.P. Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
January 31, 2023
Beo means: to bless, make happy, gladden, and delight. Based on this one introductory hearing, I believe the Beo String Quartet is poised to do just that, to an ever widening circle of audiences. It is not easy to distinguish one’s ensemble these days, with so much competition, especially in the quartet formation. The Beo players have an unusual feature: All of the players are multi-talented, playing other instruments (and electronics, video, etc.) than their principal one, however on this occasion, we were only treated briefly to some of Andrew Giordano’s whistling. Also, first violinist Jason Neukom is violist/composer Sean Neukom’s brother.
Let me begin by stating clearly their primary virtues: two areas of perfection—1) absolute purity of intonation, which was really evident in their Bach selections and 2) that supernatural “one-ness” of interpretive intent that animates the best quartets. Well, you might say, is there a “but” coming? Not so much a “but,” rather a cautionary admonition to choose better contemporary music. I sense that they are a “young” group in attitude though the quartet itself is eight years old, and I’m certain they will grow beautifully.
The recital began with Mizzy Mazzoli’s Enthusiasm Strategies, a work about which she states “I think of music itself as a strategy for mustering enthusiasm and joy.” Composed for the legendary Kronos Quartet, the flights of skittering harmonics do collapse into a modern version of a chorale, but the disappearing ending for me gave a quite unenthusiastic tone to the end, depressing in fact. There was a lot of non-vibrato playing from the strings, a severe test of intonation, which Beo more than met. In fact, there was a lot of non-vibrato playing throughout the program, but they knew when to turn it on for heightened expressivity.
They then followed with a quick tour through just over one-fourth of Bach’s seminal Die Kunst der Fuge, his musical last will and testament, beginning with the first two, and ending with the (projected) unfinished quadruple fugue, the third subject area of which contains the musical spelling of Bach’s name: B (B Flat)-A-C-H (B Natural). In this selection, I felt the need for more experience. What they did do very well was truly give the sense of a conversation among equals. The subject’s first five notes are: D-A-F-D-C♯ (in German, the word for a musical sharp is “kreuz” or cross [♯], a word that held great significance for the Pietist Lutheran milieu in which Bach worked). The quartet played the first four notes without vibrato, then poured it on appropriately for the “cross.” Since Bach wrote out the work in four-part open score, to stress the pedagogical aspect, and included absolutely no suggestions of instrumentation, phrasing, or dynamics, every soloist or ensemble who wishes to tackle it faces a daunting multitude of decisions to be made. There were two areas I found lacking, despite my admiration for the give-and-take: 1) some odd phrasing and articulation choices that would probably infuriate the “historically informed” people, and which plain old non-expert audiences would be blissfully unaware of; (appoggiaturas not resolving to their lower notes, questionable detaching of notes that could be smooth and vive versa) and 2) more important, there was a need for greater understanding of where the harmonic stresses and resolutions should be, the result of the vertical chords created by the horizontal lines, of which Bach was very aware. I’m being super-picky only because the greatness of this body of work deserves, as cellist Ryan Ash put it, lifetime study. However, it was a great pleasure, as the contrapuncti rolled over the audience, to gaze upward to the glorious coffered ceiling of J.P. Morgan’s library and its treasure trove of books and manuscripts, and to feel centered in a hive of civilization.
The quartet then turned to a composition by its own violist, Sean Neukom, whose People (2022) received its New York City premiere. Its program is a bit simplistic, “We’re born. We grow. We learn.” We achieve greatness… but wait, we’re so ineffectual at solving problems like war and poverty. Oh, we die and the cycle starts all over again with new birth. Such large themes, while often attempted in musical transformations, were not convincingly solved by this one. Although (!) we did get to hear the uncommonly pretty and pure whistling of Andrew Giordano. Sean Neukom is also the group’s producer, responsible for their already large (and growing) discography. In this work we heard the coalescing of elements into life, their increase, and the addition of chaos, and the slipping back into nothingness (reminiscent of the Mazzoli), where the whistling took on a poignant character. On the other hand, why are we whistling about the life cycle? Because there is nothing to be done about it? Today’s young people are clearly working out some existential unease.
The quartet saved the best for last: Shostakovich’s self-made memorial (though he would live another fifteen years), his eighth string quartet, Op. 110 (1960). Not only does it contain blatantly the musical spelling of his name (see Bach above) D-S-C-H (D, E flat, C, B Natural), but many fragments of his earlier works (First, Eighth, and Tenth Symphonies, Piano Trio, First Violin Concerto, First Cello Concerto, Second Piano Sonata, the song Tormented By Grievous Bondage, and the love theme from Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the work that got him in so much trouble with Stalin). All this is presented in five movements dedicated ostensibly “In memory of the victims of fascism and war,” which the bumbling, musically ignorant Soviet bureaucrats could interpret as pro-Soviet, and everyone who knew Shostakovich could know was exactly the opposite. I call this phenomenon “the secret signs, the impenetrable wall.”
The heat of Beo’s performance of this work showed me that its strengths may lie in the traditional repertoire, despite their commitment to adventuresome commissioning and their admirable educational outreach angle—so necessary if there is to be an audience for this sort of thing at all in the future. Every contrast in the work was brought out beautifully, from the violence of “the three knocks” of the KGB on one’s door at three in the morning, to the song the Jews were forced to sing while digging their own trench graves, to the sickly limping of the klezmer-inspired waltz, and the cloying romance of the doomed adulterers in Lady Macbeth. Now there’s a composer who can successfully put ALL of life into a piece of music!
Bravo Beo, I hope to hear many more good things from and about you for years to come.
