#72: Evaluations
Section 7: Antonin Dvořák – String Quartet Op.51, ii: Dumka
This section offers a small taste of our evaluations in the passage b.39-59. We felt this take was getting closer, but the cello needed to be more ‘covered’; the inégale was too subtle – to the extent of being barely audible on listening back; vibrato was too present in second violin; and the violist remarked that far from hearing her own intentions back – which had seemed vivid at the time – the sound played back was ‘plain’, as if lacking ‘content‘ (especially by comparison with the Czech Quartet).
The sense of propulsion in the viola line b.47 onwards was particularly interesting to us, because while it does not technically ‘rush’, the sound remains airborne, and never ‘sits’ in the string. We found we had to release the bow a little more after the contact has started: one opens and develops the sound through a kind of self-reinforcing resonance, instead of increasing contact ‘into’ the string. (This is reminiscent of the motion involved in playing the instruments of the viol family, in which that moment of release ‘outwards’ needs to happen very early in every strong ‘push’ stroke).
A further dimension here is the need for a certain lightening in the bow towards the end of the viola’s long note, but early enough for the note to then gain momentum and develop into the next pitch. (The effect of this is a little ‘wiggle’). That shape is connected to the timing of the semiquavers in the second violin – not in terms of precise timing, but in the slight feeling of instability that accompanies the harmonic intensification. Finally, as the viola’s role changes to one of bass support, it seemed important that the increase in ‘core’ did not compromise the feeling of development in the tone, because that capacity was essential if it was to relate to the trajectory of the voices above it.
Dvořák’s score here evokes a vivid sense of different ‘teams’, as recognisable figures are passed around the group. One might assume, on brief acquaintance with the Czech Quartet’s style, that clipped gestures might take on a certain flippant spontaneity here. Although I would not want to deny this improvisational spirit, we felt that they were able to ground those imaginative characterisations in the ‘thread’ of the harmonic narrative, in a way that was conspicuously elusive to our early renditions. The progressions b.55-59 were significantly more successful once we had spent time playing them at a free but much reduced tempo, zoning into the potential twist, angles, resolutions, and partnerships of each ‘vertical slice’ (see also #3).
As in #54, seeing certain key modulations as ‘targets’ was useful here. In copying, we increasingly felt that the ability to hold destinations in mind was entirely commensurate with the Czech Quartet’s ostensibly more ‘rhetorical’ surface. Thinking about what performers are doing with their attention suggests that dichotomies between moment-to-moment spontaneity and entirely ‘planned-out’ inflexibility are ultimately unnecessary. A sense of ‘direction’ does not need to be entwined with a specifically structural ‘model’ of music; there are many more ways of conceiving goal-directedness. In this passage, embracing teleology in how we played together – but not, of course, ‘together’ – lent our performance a more compelling, integrated quality, even while the surface gestures and spoken figures retained their non-literal character.
Finally, the last four bars of this excerpt (especially b.58) posed an entertaining problem: our second violinist was keen to try arriving at the cadence later than everybody else, but found it impossible in practice, because everyone was (unintentionally) continuing to follow her. Clearly, these are not easy habits to overcome. When concentrating on multiple things at once – including new ways of using the bow, and exploring new kinds of connections between notes – we often found that our learned synchronisation responses returned with a vengeance.
