Marc Campa
The Wisconsin Union’s concert committee scored high by presenting the remarkable Cuarteto Casals, which is, quite simply, one of today’s greatest string quartets.
Founded in 1997, the quartet has residence status at the Spanish royal court, but also has a firm base in Barcelona, at the center of Catalan musical life. It has chosen for its name that of the great Catalan cellist, Pau Casals, and it thoroughly lives up to that identification. The ensemble’s successful concerts and its impressive output of recordings have won it wide critical and popular acclaim internationally.
As a quartet, Cuarteto Casals displays utter precision and a strong group spirit. One of its notable practices is to rotate the first and second violin players. The program for this March 1 concert also demonstrated the ensemble’s stylistic versatility. Opening was Haydn’s enchanting Quartet in C, Op. 33, No. 3, “The Bird.” The group made the most of the avian evocations, but did so with the utmost polish.
Second came the strongly contrasting “modernist” work, Béla Bartók’s Quartet No. 3. This is a complicated and demanding work, for both players and listeners. Tightly and densely constructed, it posed no terrors for the Cuarteto Casals, who controlled every detail of motivic and rhythmic construction.
After the intermission came the earliest music in the program: four of the Fantazias for four parts, by Henry Purcell. These early works of the young Purcell were studies in the transformation of an old English form, dedicated to viol consorts. But the composer seems to have envisioned their possibilities as transitional steps to groups from the violin family of instruments — in effect, prototypes for the string quartet. Our ensemble quite grasped the lingering qualities of polyphonic writing. And, with the exception of the cellist, they played without vibrato, in accord with present musicology.
For the program conclusion, there was another work of fascinating stylistic transition, the Quartet in G minor by Claude Debussy. Composed in 1893, and in traditional form, it shows Debussy rethinking the traditional character of quartet writing along lines to be followed in the 20th century. Avoiding too perfumed or elegant a French manner of playing, the Casals group struck forward robustly, very artfully revealing the possibilities of motivic exploration and harmonic adventure that the composer would pursue further in his career.
In a spoken comment, the violist made a local gesture by reporting how much the group was influenced by the great Rudolf Kolisch, who led the Pro Arte Quartet for many years at the University of Wisconsin.
