The Miró Quartet

Miró Quartet

Bates Recital Hall

Feb. 5

The Miró Quartet has been busy celebrating Felix Mendelssohn's 200th birthday. After a four-month sabbatical, during which the ensemble ran a performance seminar at the

University of Texas on the composer's quartets, the Miró is back on its crowded touring schedule, traveling across the U.S., Canada, and beyond.

Lucky for us, the Miró continues to call Austin home, and as UT's faculty string quartet-in-residence, the chamber group took the stage of Bates Recital Hall for a concert of works that spanned the life and experiences of Mendelssohn, the world's most famous composer during his lifetime.

Written in midcareer, the String Quartet in D Major kicked off the evening. The members of the Miró attacked each spirited movement with grace, soaring through Mendelssohn's layers of sound with great clarity. It is striking to see how well the players know one another as artists, their seamless collaboration the sharpened tools of a world-class ensemble. Among the highlights were a beautiful andante in the third movement and the alarmingly fast presto of the final movement, which came across crisp and flawless.

The tone changed dramatically for the String Quartet in F Minor, the last piece Mendelssohn wrote before his death. Uneasiness, anxiety, and struggle permeate Mendelssohn's final opus. In introducing the piece, cellist Joshua Gindele noted that it was composed in a period of deep depression following the death of Mendelssohn's beloved sister, Fanny, and that the composer was also dealing with a bout of writer's block; in spite of these obstacles, the work is deeply emotive and memorable.

Toward the end of the unsettled first movement, Daniel Ching's soaring first violin held a single, aching note high above the player's ominous thematic material. It was an awesome moment, one that conjured the image of a desperate man clinging to a bridge, turbulent waters raging below. The piece did offer a fleeting moment of peace at the end of the adagio third movement. In the last bars, the quartet evoked a tender nostalgia as the movement settled into a calm major chord, tenderly drawing all sound out of Bates Hall.

For the exciting Octet for String Quartet E-Flat Major, written by Mendelssohn at the age of 16, the Miró Quartet invited violinists Sarah Pizzichemi and Kevin Mendoza, violist Ben Leatherwood, and cellist Dave Campbell to join them. Though the addition of guest players tends to disrupt some of the alchemy of a finely tuned ensemble, in this case the Miró led their guests to a fine performance. Balance was strong throughout, exemplified with the youthful bounce of the opening allegro. The group danced through the frenetic, exposed scherzo, a Mendelssohn trademark, with great energy, such that once the final movement's furious fugue kicked off with Campbell's assured opening flourish, you had to wonder if the group would wear itself out. Not the case, as after three standing ovations, the group offered the scherzo again as a worthy encore.

Did I mention that the guest artists were University of Texas students? Indeed, as a culmination of the aforementioned seminar, the Miró rewarded the top student ensemble with a chance to perform alongside their mentors on stage. This was pedagogy at its best – and a pat on the back to those who made the quartet's residency possible. The opportunity to perform with the finest musicians in your field is among the most transformational experiences a student can have, one offered by the best of music schools. It was an inspired addition to an inspiring performance.