A night when time stood still
Classical quartet Tashi reunites for anniversary
of composer's birth
BY BRADLEY BAMBARGER
Star-Ledger Staff
When Tashi last played Princeton's McCarter Theatre, the young foursome was a top draw on college campuses, playing modern music to audiences that looked a lot like them. The world is unrecognizable from 1977 in many ways, but time seemed to have stood still on Thursday.
The members of Tashi -- violin ist Ida Kavafian, pianist Peter Ser kin, cellist Fred Sherry and clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, all top names now -- have performed in various combinations since the late '70s, but the group hadn't reunited to perform the piece that brought it together until January.
Olivier Messiaen was born 100 years ago this year, so it must have seemed as ideal a moment as any to revisit his "Quartet for the End of Time." The McCarter wasn't as full as it probably was in 1977, and there were undoubtedly more gray heads in the audience this time, too (matching some of those on stage). But there were also more students than usual at a chamber concert, even in Princeton.
Unlike most rock bands of the era that reunite, Tashi couldn't have disappointed old fans or new. The group played Messiaen's 50-minute piece of modernist mysticism with intense poetry.
The French composer wrote his "Quartet" in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp.
Although inspired by the Book of Revelation and the idea of time eternally suspended, Messiaen was forced to be practical, writing for fellow internees on the instru ments available. They debuted the work for prisoners and guards alike. It must have cast an unre peatable spell, even on a battered piano and a cello with only three strings.
Before Tashi made its classic recording of the "Quartet" in 1975, they benefited from a coaching ses sion with Messiaen (who died in 1992). He emphasized utmost light and shade, his dynamic extremes entailing enormous concentration. Thursday's performance wasn't flawless (Sherry's exuberance at one point caused him to send his blow clattering to the floor), but it was deeply human and touching.
The heart of the "Quartet" is the movement "Praise to the Eter nity of Jesus." Sherry played its prayer-like melody raptly over piano chords tolling like a distant church bell. Another especially hypnotic episode was "Abyss of the Birds," for solo clarinet. Stoltzman keened and cooed in imitation of Messiaen's beloved bird song.
Tashi warmed up with transcriptions of early polyphony by Josquin du Prez and Thomas Mor ley recently made for the group by Charles Wuorinen, both radiant examples of the math in music. Also on the bill was a work by Elliott Carter, born a day after Messiaen but still around to enjoy his centenary. Carter's "Omaggio a Italo Calvino," a brief trio for violin, cello and clarinet written when Carter was 82, makes stark demands, with Stoltzman sighing with relief as he exhaled its last note.
The great Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu saw Messiaen as a "spiritual mentor" and was a close friend to Tashi, writing "Quatrain" for the group to play with orchestra or on its own. This is art of color and wave-like rhythm, not goal-oriented music in the usual Western, Beethovenian sense. It was hard to imagine a more beautiful performance; it felt ethereal yet animal as Tashi seemed to breathe the music as much as perform it. Pedaling Takemitsu's Debussy-like piano part, Serkin left resonances hanging in the air when the others paused.
The night's most striking sound was an amazingly gradual cry from Stoltzman's clarinet as it rose through a cloud of resonance like a nightingale in an otherwise placid garden.
© 2008 New Jersey On-Line LLC.