Poiesis Quartet
Photo by Eden Davis
Before the pandemic, my friend DB had twice gone to Banff, in Canada, to attend the Banff International String Quartet Competition. BISQC, as its known, has taken place every three years since 1986, and a number of prominent quartets have won or placed in the competition, including the Hagen, Lark, St. Louis, Ying, Miró, Belcea, and Castalian.
I'd considered attending, but it wasn't going to be possible this year for either myself or DB. But the BISQC conveniently livestreams all of the competition rounds and then archives the performances, making it possible to sort of attend from afar. It is true that even with a good sound system or smart TV, it's not really the same; you won't hear the sound that's in the concert hall or feel the energy there.
So I proposed that DB and my friend BH watch what we could and compare notes over Zoom when we could. This worked out extremely well. DB and I are in the Bay Area, while BH is in Philadelphia; it wasn't too onerous to figure out meeting times, and we could watch the livestream or archived performances. (If you want to see any of the performances, start here.)
There were nine generally excellent string quartets in the competition; a tenth withdrew before the competition. (From that quartet's web site, it looks as though they might have disbanded or been faced with a major problem of some sort.) The competition is held in multiple rounds, as follows:
- 21st century and Haydn round. Playing Haydn is a real test of any performer's ability to catch the composer's grace and wit, whether the performer is a pianist, conductor, or string quartet.
- Romantic round
- Canadian commission round. Every quartet plays the same work, having received the music at the same time and given the opportunity to work with / consult with the composer. This year's commission was Kati Agócs's very beautiful Rapprochement.
- Beethoven/Schubert + 21st c. round
- Finals. Each quartet performs a program of its own choosing.
There was really no doubting the skill and musicianship of these groups, though I confess that I did not much like the artistic choices made by the Quatuor Magenta.
So, to make a long story short, the Poiesis Quartet, formed at Oberlin and currently studying at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, won the competition as a whole and also won the Canadian Commission Prize for their performance of Rapprochement.
Where the Poiesis obviously stood out was in their performances of 20th and 21st c. music, but they also played a magnificent Brahms Op. 67, the only Brahms heard in the entire competition, if I'm remembering this correctly. DB said it was the best single performance of a Brahms quartet in his experience.
Where this is all leading to: the Poiesis made their San Francisco debut this past Sunday, at Noe Music, a great venue for chamber music. Their program included several works from their final round:
- Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate, Pisachi
- Brian Raphael Nabors, String Quartet
- Kevin Lau, String Quartet No. 7
- Sky Macklay, Many, Many Cadences
- Sergei Prokofiev, String Quartet No. 2
What can I say? The Poiesis plays a lot of intense music, with astonishing focus and intensity, filling the smallish venue with full-bodied sound. Their focus came across in the livestreams, but the sheer intensity of their playing didn't.
Their sheer confidence, in themselves and each other, astounded me; their unanimity of thought and execution is amazing. Are they mind-readers?
Each of the pieces on their program, except the Prokofiev, is from the 21st century; Kevin Lau's 7th is a Poiesis commission. The works cover a wide range of styles and take both technique and wit to play.
Sky Macklay's Many, Many Cadences is just what it says, a nearly unending series of cadential phrases covering the full range of each instrument in the quartet and mostly going at a breakneck speed. It definitely takes a sense of humor, as well as great timing, to play well. It is funny, too, if you understand what's going on, plus there's a funny moment built in.
Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate's Pisachi incorporates music from a Pueblo Buffalo Dance, a Hopi Buffalo Dance, and a Hopi Elk Dance. It is lovely, delicate, transparent by turns, elsewhere more intense (everything Poiesis plays isn't totally balls-to-the-wall). Tate himself is Chickasaw and his program note say that it's his "intent to honor his Southwest Indian cousins through classical repertoire."
I'm in fact not going to be able to characterize each of the works, so I will mention that you can hear the
Poiesis Quartet at Stanford Live in May. The program is similar to this, but swapping Haydn for Nabors.
Elsewhere:
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