Original image by There Stands the Glass.
Brentano Quartet wasn’t my first choice on Friday night in Portland on December 4. I’d been looking forward to finally catching Thievery Corporation. My hopes were dashed when the band’s concert at Roseland Theater sold out. I made new plans when I learned that the program for Brentano Quartet’s recital at Lincoln Hall would begin with "Quietly Flowing Along" from John Cage’s Quartet in Four Parts. The weirder the better for me.
Sure enough, a distinguished matron near the front row seat I claimed amid an audience of about 125 responded in horror to an interpretation of Igor Stravinsky’s discordant Concertino for String Quartet that followed the opening salvo of Cage. I almost fell out of my chair laughing to Dmitri Shostakovich’s devious "Polka". And Barbara Sukowa’s recorded recitations of Amy Lowell’s Stravinsky-inspired poems were enlightening.
I felt as if a light had been turned on in an unevolved chamber of my brain. Experiencing the cheeky noise being created just eight feet away seemed to transport me into the consciousnesses of the late composers. Unfortunately, the Carlo Gesualdo and Ludwig van Beethoven pieces that followed an intermission extinguished my metaphysical reveries. I started thinking about Thievery Corporation just five minutes into an uninspiring version of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 16.
Original image by There Stands the Glass.