The Shanghai Quartet at Caruth Auditorium, Southern Methodist Univeristy. Final concert in the Dallas Chamber Music 2024-1025 season.
I’m a season ticket-holder, though I often miss for health reasons, and a dilettante in chamber music. I enjoy the more intimate and casual chamber music and early music concerts over more formal and larger orchestral concerts. My knowledge of Western classical music is limited; I’m familiar with the bigger names, particularly as you recede in music history. Modern classical, besides Glass, is out of my bailiwick.
This concert featured two Beethoven quartets and a more recent Penderecki quartet, plus an encore. Beethoven’s style is recognizable to me and the playing seemed solid and full of verve. The Penderecki was new to me; I was initially inclined to dislike the piece but it developed into something I enjoyed more. Reading up on Penderecki afterwards, I found that his later work had moved away from the avant garde style of his earlier period, which explained some of what I’d noticed.
The players were unsurprisingly skilled and other audience members with more experience than I have were particularly complimentary about the cellist, who drew a lot of my attention as well. They received three standing ovations, one at the end of each piece. Unfortunately I couldn’t hear the name of the encore over the whooping and applause, but they played it with even more gusto than the announced quartets. They really let their hair down: literally, as one of the violinists’ hair was flying loose from the vigor of his movements.
Getting out and listening to live music serves the same function for me as the proverbial touching grass. I commend it to anyone who feels terminally online.