A Dose of Contemporary

Catalyst Quartet

Thursday, March 19, 2015

7:30 PM

Karla Donehew-Perez, Violin

Jessie Montgomery, Violin

Paul Laraia, Viola

Karlos Rodreguez, Cello

String Quartet No. 1 - Charles Ives

Chorale: Andante con moto

Prelude: Allegro

Offertory: Adagio cantabile

Postlude: Allegro marziale

String Quartet No. 3 "Mishima" - Philip Glass

1957: Award Montage

November 25: Ichigaya

Grandmother and Kimitake

1962: Body Building

Blood Oath

Mishima/Closing

In Memory - Joan Tower

-Intermission-

Strum - Jessie Montgomery

Tenebrae - Osvaldo Golijov

String Quartet Op. 11 - Samuel Barber

Molto allegro e appassionato

Adagio

Molto allegro (come prima) - Presto

The Catalyst Quartet is a much younger quartet that likes to play a lot of contemporary music. Naturally I'm not a fan of contemporary music, but I did attend the concert since it is part of the Chamber Music Series and I bought tickets to see the entire series. While the musicianship was fine it didn't mask the overuse of dissonance that has been all too present in an effort to follow certain musical rules at the expense of the music just sounding good. What was interesting is that the Catalyst Quartet certainly lacked the stage presence of more seasoned quartets. For example, after they finished a piece, they would bow, sit down, bow again, and rearrange the violin players (the only professional quartet that didn't have set first and second violinists). It just seemed that outside of playing the music itself, the quartet wasn't really sure what they were doing, almost as if they were playing together for the first time and never really went over things such as bowing at the end of a piece. It really detracted from the performance and would make the Catalyst Quartet not worth a repeat attendance.