SHIMMERING SUBSTANCE 

October 30, 2024 | Bohemian National Hall

Quartetto di Cremona

Illustrated talk by Stephen Johnson

Haydn String Quartet in G Major, Opus 77, No. 1, 3rd Movement

Schumann Quartet in A minor, Op. 41 No. 1
Ravel String Quartet in F major, M.35

Photographs by Alex Fedorov © 2022

If one views music as painting in tones, then its canvas is time. The form of music is never present in a single moment: we have to infer it from what we’ve already heard. Sometimes the form we hear seems static, like the structure of a building or a Mondrian abstract painting. At other times it’s like hearing a story told in sounds, always adding up to more than the sum of its parts. Robert Schumann, the image of wild, eccentric, volatile German Romanticism and Maurice Ravel, the epitome of elegant Gallic containment and fine manners, seem to embody opposite extremes here. Schumann’s Op. 41 No. 1 is so wildly lateral it can feel like two very different quartets have somehow become entangled together. Ravel’s Quartet, despite presenting an image of ordered, balanced perfection, is haunted by ghostly voices that whisper of something else – something more enigmatic. Just when we think we have the form in our minds, another possibility presents itself.