OBERLIN, Ohio — Like their namesake, the Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt, the all-female Cassatt Quartet creates art with women at the forefront. Avid commissioners of new works and champions of music by female composers, the ensemble is currently recording a collection of string quartets by Black American women. On Feb. 14, Oberlin Conservatory audiences were treated to a performance of one of those pieces: Modes by Dorothy Rudd Moore (1940-2022).
A trailblazing composer, vocalist, and educator in the mid-20th century, Moore settled in New York City, where she wrote Modes in 1968. That same year, she co-founded the Society of Black Composers — an organization promoting artists of color to a nation still fresh off the signing of the Civil Rights Act, which had formally outlawed racial segregation four years before. The National Symphony, Opera Ebony, Buffalo Philharmonic, and various solo artists commissioned Moore’s work.
As part of their Ohio tour with pianist Emely Phelps, the Cassatt Quartet performed Modes alongside works by Shostakovich and Brahms. Violinists Muneko Otani and Jennifer Leshnower, violist Emily Brandenburg, and cellist Gwen Krosnick brought a captivating energy to Moore’s 12-minute work, which brims with chromaticism and passages of haunting beauty. Krosnick began the opening fugue with a theme that rose out of the cello before passing smoothly to the other players in turn. The group’s intonation became problematic in the sparse, sometimes dissonant Adagio, but the final Allegro burst with vitality in a spiral of syncopated rhythms that called on everyone’s strengths equally.
The program’s focus on its most under-recognized composer shifted away all too soon, but the vivid musical colors of the mid-20th century persisted throughout Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 14 in F-sharp. Shostakovich, a Moore contemporary on the other side of the world, wrote his piece in 1973, five years after Modes. Amid its twists and turns, the musicians captured the work’s capacity for both deep grief and fluttering hope, and they delivered its grandest passages with a ferocity that had the walls of Kulas Recital Hall ringing.
Krosnick’s cello consistently led the way. With a seemingly bottomless depth to her sound, her performance held one’s attention at every turn, whether in the bouncy theme at the onset of the Allegretto or the delicate melody from the Adagio, suspended against a pizzicato backdrop.
Violist Brandenburg, who joined the group in fall 2024, shares Krosnick’s dark, rich tone. Every bow change in the violist’s first-movement solo felt smooth, and she held her own amid parts that intertwined. In a biting pizzicato section toward the end of the Allegretto, Brandenburg and second violinist Leshnower plucked hard enough to create audible snaps as the strings hit their fingerboards. Simultaneously, Krosnick and first violinist Otani blended their lengthening notes before fading into a contemplative distance.
Post-intermission, the Cassatt moved into the land of rich melody with Brahms’ Piano Quintet in F minor. Pianist Emely Phelps fit naturally into the group as a guest fifth member, adding even more colors to their palette. She cut through the texture whenever necessary, ensuring that the piano’s voice was not lost during the intense climax of the first movement. Clean, swooping phrases defined the second movement.
Although eye contact among the five musicians was limited, they still projected a healthy sense of ensemble. Krosnick stayed firmly connected with Phelps’ left-hand lines during the second movement, and the pianist returned the gesture in the third, briskly keeping up with the string players despite the dense volley of notes.
As the music increased in tempo and intensity, feet began to tap and bodies began to sway. The sheer volume of the ensemble made Kulas Hall feel a little small, but the air buzzed with energy.
Cassatt, the artist, painted many women in the act of caretaking — kissing their children, playing with them, bathing them. And the Cassatt Quartet treats their music in a similarly generous way. For a performance on Valentine’s Day, there could hardly have been a clearer expression of love.
[For a transcript of a 1990 interview of Dorothy Rudd Moore by Chicago radio interviewer Bruce Duffy, visit https://www.bruceduffie.com/moore.html.]
