They made it look easy.
ORLEANS – They made it look easy.
The Ying Quartet opened a weeklong residency at the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival Monday evening, offering a program that ranged from unabashedly sentimental to wickedly virtuosic. No matter what the music being performed at the Church of the Holy Spirit, the Yings left flamboyance aside, diving into Borodin, Stravinsky and Beethoven with assuredness and skill.
Sometimes flash substitutes for substance, but with substantial music on the stands, there was no need for embellishments. Great playing was all that was needed, and the Yings supplied it.
Formed in 1988, the Yings were originally an all-sibling ensemble: Timothy and Janet on violins, Phillip on viola, David on cello. Robin Scott joined the Yings in 2015. He is the third first-chair violinist the group has had since Timothy Ying left the group in 2010, and here’s hoping he stays in that chair for a long time.
Borodin’s second quartet provided the romance for the evening. Lushly conceived, sentimental at its core, this quartet has had its melodies stolen for many other purposes, most famously (at least for a certain generation) by the 1950s musical “Kismet.”
Two themes, but one overall mood – the cantilena singing quality that all the strings use – prevail in the opening movement. Scott especially exhibited a clarity of tone – that never changed all evening – and elegantly shaped, articulate phrases.
The second movement scherzo has inventive changes, but the heart of this quartet – and its fame – lies in the third movement. Marked as a nocturne, it buries its dreamy qualities under a soft blanket of a melody. Describing its structure would be like taking apart a rose.
Tender, evocative, the melody gets delivered in straightforward manner – with numerous grace notes the only ornament – at first by the cello. But everyone gets a turn at it. A nervous rising scale interrupts the movement midway – simply to create a distraction.
One melody like this suffices, and it’s so perfectly formed that each of the players must take a turn saying farewell to it at the conclusion of the movement.
It creates one of those moments when you wish there were a repeat button for real life. Or that we lived a century or so ago, when audiences could (and would) demand that a quartet play a movement over again. That feeling.
The final movement does not match the magic of the notturno – but then very few movements in all the chamber repertory do.
What stood out about this performance was the straightforward approach to the score adopted by the Yings. The music begs for an over-emoted interpretation, but great groups avoid obvious, detrimental crowd-pleasing devices. The beauties of Borodin’s second quartet stand on their own, and the Yings let them do just that.
The shock of Stravinsky’s angular “Concertino for String Quartet” came so abruptly that one wonders if the works should have been reversed in the program. The one movement quartet – two moods really, with a slow middle section that offers a rigorous first-violin cadenza – takes its time growing into comprehensibility. The appeal lies in its challenges, overcome.
Beethoven’s three Razumovsky quartets form a crown of chamber music achievement, and the last one, in C major, is indisputably the jewel. It builds its way decisively toward a climactic final movement – even inserting a calming minuet third section to delay the rush – which does not disappoint.
Many aspects stood out, one most notable. The first movement has two melodies, but then argues with them both in a set of two-note attacks, mainly in the first violin. Two notes, but not the same pitches – slightly different intervals, almost like repeated questions with slightly different wording.
Scott elucidated the interrogations elegantly, building a suspense that would only be relieved in the driving, hard-charging finale.
The Yings perform twice more to close their residency, and the festival: Wednesday in Chatham and Friday in Wellfleet.
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