The Poiesis Quartet made a sensational entry into the chamber music world at large after grabbing the top prize at the Banff International Chamber Music Competition last August. The foursome — which came together at Oberlin and has been in residence at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music — that was showcased in Alberta was a group of mind-melded musicians whose performances, of terrific energy and superb ensemble in canonical and contemporary repertoire, announced the arrival of a string quartet to reckon with.
And it was no small feat for Marina Radiushina, director of the Miami Chamber Music Society’s Mainly Mozart Festival, to end this season’s concert series June 12 at the University of Miami’s lovely Newman Recital Hall with an appearance by this quartet, which has European and Canadian tours as well as recordings in its future, and will soon be the quartet-in-residence at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.
Miami’s concert marked the first change in the Poiesis lineup, with second violinist Max Ball replaced by Coco Mi, a Juilliard graduate, joining first violinist Sarah Ying Ma, violist Jasper de Boor and cellist Drew Dansby. Quartet members say Ball’s exit from the group after three years was amicable, and reflected the violinist’s wish to pursue other opportunities. Mi proved to be a quick study whose energy level and feeling for ensemble matches the quartet that won the Banff.
The June 12 concert, which was well-attended, featured works from the quartet’s Love Letters project, in which the group commissioned works from young QTPOC (queer and trans people of color) composers at Oberlin. Four of their works occupied the first half of the concert and demonstrated that the field of contemporary chamber music is vibrant and exciting, and that the venerable centuries-old genre of the string quartet is alive and well in the 21st century.
The first work on the program, Daniel Lasagna’s Circus of the Mind, suggested by its title that the music would be a whirlwind of impressions, but it turned out to be lyrically minded; this is a composer who believes in melody. And while the piece featured some mildly unusual effects like quartet-wide slides of collapsing harmony and sudden pizzicato pops, it was essentially a straightforward essay in latter-day romantic tonal writing, and quite lovely. The Poiesis played it with full-on warmth and commitment.
Forest of Taldeni, by Maya Irizzary Lambright, which came next, is part notated and part graphic score, and much closer to the sound-picture style of contemporary composition, with its ad lib section of the four members of the quartet knocking their instruments or playing scratch tones as they explored a more percussive sound world. That came in handy during the middle section, with Lambright evoking her Puerto Rican heritage with Latin dance rhythms in Dansby’s cello accompanied by the other members drumming on their violins and viola. (A violinist, Lambright also was in a string quartet and led a Latin band while at Oberlin.) The final section of the piece featured a mournful chorale in the second violin and viola, played with intensity by Mi and de Boor, that built to a crush of polytonal chords before evaporating in a final statement from the cello.
Although the piece’s effectiveness can vary depending on what happens in the graphic section, its mix of high spirits and somber reflection make it a compelling work. The Poiesis appeared to relish its challenge, and it demonstrated the quartet’s affinity for this more improvisatory approach.
The third piece, Commonplace Little Perils, was written by Max Lang, a creative writing graduate from Oberlin, and recalls her time working a summer job at a Colorado ranch. The composer’s title comes from her observation that many dangerous things lurk in the countryside, which adds a feeling of menace to time spent in natural splendor. Part of the piece includes a short poem by Lang, parts of which were read by each member of the quartet in turn.
Lang’s piece is an exercise in atmosphere and reflection, with the sounds of bird calls in the violins over big John Luther Adams-style chordal gestures in the viola and cello, and a largely static backdrop for the poem, in which Lang notices the dryness of the area and wonders about getting lost. The piece ends in quiet and solitude and whispers from the strings, but the most effective part of the music came in the solo passages played so evocatively by Dansby and de Boor, which suggested a broader musical landscape that Lang might want to explore.
Lang is on the evidence of Commonplace Little Perils a very gifted composer; it is remarkable that she has written such a skillful piece of quartet writing while majoring in something else. She is fortunate to have had the Poiesis Quartet in her corner.
The last work on the first half was Calvin Ray Shawler’s Order, which was more in the vein of virtuoso Bartók than the other three pieces, and struck me as more demanding from a fundamental standpoint. Shawler’s piece is a powerful expression of deeply felt emotion, with its often violent writing culminating in a blizzard of triplets and a unison race to the top, leaving shattered mutterings from the cello to close the work in a hush. The Poiesis, in its original incarnation and its new, is a very physical quartet that moves and sways throughout its performances, and here in the Shawler the players seemed to greatly enjoy the composer’s volume, drive and anguished writing, digging in with their bodies as they brought the piece to life.
It was here that the special quality of the Poiesis, its fierce, vigorous style of engagement, was most clearly on display in the first half of the concert, and Shawler, who is still a student at Oberlin, is a composer with a lot to say, and no doubt we will be hearing from him in the future. All four of the composers did themselves proud and the Poiesis is to be congratulated on commissioning these fine pieces.
Radiushina, a splendid pianist whose work over the years has been familiar to Miami and South Florida audiences, joined the Poiesis Quartet for the second half’s lone work, the Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34, of Johannes Brahms, written in 1864. This is one of the most admired pieces of the 19th-century chamber music literature, composed as Brahms was coming into the full flower of his mature style.
This was one of the most aggressive, fiery performances of this work I’ve heard, with the Poiesis particularly at its most expansive in the Scherzo and the statement in the first movement of the main theme. Brahms’s symphonism in this work (and the First was still 12 years away) is one of its most appealing qualities, and Radiushina and the quartet’s muscular reading made it sound as freshly composed as the new music on the first half. This was a music-making that gave the composer’s ideas a sense that they could have gone in a completely different direction than they did, and it was thrilling to see all five musicians perform this familiar quintet as though Brahms had emailed them their parts only weeks before.
While there was little evidence of technical fault in the quartet’s playing, it tends to go all-out on big climaxes, which in the Brahms was very exciting but almost too much of a good thing. The group has power to burn, and pulling back just a bit in some of the climactic passages of such works would give them another shade in their portfolio of colors.
The Poiesis (the name means “formation” or “emergence”) is a quartet of young people in their early 20s and 30s, and they plan to focus about 70 percent of their repertoire on contemporary music. This is good for the cause of new music, but it also offers them an interesting path forward. The Kronos Quartet, most notably, has focused almost exclusively on new music and played very little canonical music in its career of more than 50 years. There are others in the field, such as the Jack Quartet, which also has new music as its mission statement, and it may be that the Poiesis does much the same thing, with a special focus on LGBTQ composers.
South Florida audiences were fortunate to hear this stellar quartet here at the very start of their international career, and it was gratifying to see a substantial house attend the concert. Today’s chamber music scene is livelier than it has been in years, and local concertgoers got a rare chance to find out just why that is.