If your New Year’s Resolution wasn’t to see a live string quartet performance, it probably should have been.
Oh, how often I’ve heard someone proclaim that they ‘love’ string quartets. An adoration that’s usually sprung from the genius arranging of “Eleanor Rigby” or the unsettling repetition of Clint Mansell’s “Lux Aeterna” (the theme from Requiem for a Dream), or at the very least a guilty pleasure along the lines of metal-gone-chamber music, Apocalyptica (you know who you are). But I very rarely hear about anyone actually going out and seeing a live string quartet perform. If you count yourself among those uninitiated in the ways of live chamber music, a question: what are you waiting for? Seriously. It’s long overdue. A live string quartet is its own living being, its heart pounding, its voice soothing one moment and growling the next. The string instruments have the eerie ability to sing in the register of a person and wrench a variety of emotions using their wide range of articulations.
Lucky for you: your first chance to experience a live string quartet is tonight at the Chapel Performance Space, as Seattle’s OdeonQuartet presents “Vintage Firsts.” Double lucky for you: the program includes Bartok’s String Quartet No. 1 in all it angular, distorted beauty. Next up is Beethoven. This guy practically wrote the book on string quartets. You’ll get to hear the first of his middle period quartets, where things really start to get interesting. And look! Something more contemporary and local: Kam Morrill’s 1988 String Quartet No. 1 will end the program. It’s a $5-$15 sliding scale, 7:30pm.