NEW YORK — Inveterate presenter Music Before 1800 (MB1800) is celebrating its 50th-anniversary season by defying its own name. The program “Letters to a Young Poet” on Dec. 15 in Adler Hall at the New York Society for Ethical Culture featured music of those beloved early-music composers…Ravel and Debussy.
“The period music movement has now extended well into the early 20th century,” the promotional text explained, “as intrepid groups re-examine the late world of gut strings.” The intrepid Diderot String Quartet was there to demonstrate each composer’s single quartet as played on gut-strung instruments. That alone would have been plenty to justify the program, but there was much more going on.
Co-sponsored by the Poetry Society of New York, the concert also celebrated the 150th birth anniversaries of both Ravel and poet Rainer Maria Rilke. And it was a celebration of the discovery in 2020 of correspondence between Rilke and a young soldier and budding poet named Franz Kappus. Plus it was a chance for MB1800 artistic director Bill Barclay to revisit his acting roots and stretch his music-plus-theater directorial muscles (he was previously the director of music at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London).
Sound like a lot? It was. But despite everything, it was the Diderot Quartet and its gut strings that remained the stars of the show.
Ravel’s 1903 Quartet in F major was used as a backdrop for recitations of some of the poets’ letters (translated by Damion Searls), which were written in that same year. As the letters continued, the Debussy was then meant to represent an inspiration to the younger Ravel, just as Rilke had been to Kappus.
Barclay as Rilke wore a black suit (costumes by Govane Lohbauer), sitting at his writing desk at one end of the stage, while David Joseph as Kappus in a soldier’s uniform sat at a tavern table opposite, with the quartet in the middle. Projections by Hillary Leben showed old maps and sepia-tinted photos of places where the four historical figures had lived and traveled.
The Diderot Quartet opened the program with the first movement of the Ravel. The mellowness of the gut strings was immediately apparent, giving off a shimmering sound that swelled and abated like water, full of warmth and longing. Adriane Post gently cradled her first-violin melodies before passing them to violist Kyle Miller, who treated them with equal tenderness. The sound focused on Ravel’s lush romanticism more than his modernism, putting him into the context of his musical predecessors.
Then, halfway through the movement, the Diderot stopped playing, and Barclay recited the first Rilke letter. That would have been jarring under any circumstances, but it was made doubly so by the poorly functioning sound equipment that garbled and distorted Barclay’s words, making his resonant bass voice hard to understand. After the perfect acoustic balance of the quartet, it was quite a shock to the system. The sound did improve somewhat over the course of the program (and Joseph’s voice, being higher, was not so negatively affected).
Happily, there was no pause for recitation during the famous pizzicato second movement, which was satisfyingly bone-dry, mysterious, and sly. The gut strings were especially noticeable in the all-bowed middle section, which sounded less tense than usual and more like a whispered conversation.
Movement III was played simultaneously with the reading of a Rilke letter that discussed the meaning of human sexuality. The music and the text were well matched dramatically, like a carefully edited film score. Somehow, the talking during the music was not quite as emotionally disruptive as stopping the music mid-movement.
Its phrases intricately shaped by the Diderot, the final movement was allowed to play through without speaking. Second violin Johanna Novom’s fast-alternating octaves provided a mesmerizing inner texture. The ensemble work was by turns buoyant and buzzing with intensity.
After intermission came Debussy’s Quartet in G minor, written 10 years before the Ravel. The violinists switched chairs, with Novom demonstrating an aggressive leadership style that served the piece well. The quartet produced deeply colored, sensitive sounds. Paul Dwyer‘s long cello lines soared against violin scalar patterns growing one from another like a single organism. The gut strings added softening low frequencies.
There was no chance to bathe in that glorious sound, however. Joseph started speaking before the final chord of the first movement had stopped ringing (something he did several times). Movement III was played second while Joseph read Kappus’ musing that women would one day come into their own and stop being compared to men. The quartet sounded thoughtful and full of hope, luxuriating in Debussy’s exploratory counterpoint, their acoustic blend particularly impressive in this delicate texture.
Presumably, the choice to switch the order of movements was made for dramatic reasons, but it’s not insignificant that Ravel’s pizzicato second movement was modeled after Debussy’s pizzicato second movement, not third, and given nearly the same expressive marking, Assez vif et bien rythmé.
The Rilke/Kappus letters capture the unbridled enthusiasm and chronic desperation of a young artist who feels alone in the world, answered by the wisdom of an older poet who encourages that sense of loneliness as fodder for great art. Presented in a different context, these letters would be captivating. Here, although they were well read by the actors, they often worked at cross-purposes with the music’s presentation.
A video recording of “Letters to a Young Poet” will be available online (with a paid ticket) starting Dec. 30 at 4 p.m.
