Mark Fewer
violin
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Mark Fewer - Quartet performs with passion - Penticton Herald
November 25, 2011, 12:00 am
Quartet performs with passion
ALANNA MATTHEW/Special to The Herald
11/24/2011
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The St. Lawrence String Quartet blazed into Penticton on the Community Concerts bill.
This group consists of Scott St. John, violin, Lesley Robertson, viola, Christopher Constanza, cello, and Mark Fewer, violin, standing in for Geoff Nuttall, currently on paternity leave. The quartet is currently the ensemble in residence at Stanford University, where the group collaborates with faculty and works with music students.
The quartet has won accolades for its precision and passionate interpretation of familiar repertoire, and is recognized as a world-class chamber ensemble.
This concert presented string quartets by Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert and a work composed specially for them by Canadian Osvaldo Golijov that was commissioned by Carnegie Hall and Stanford University Lively Arts with the generous support of Kathryn Gould.
Opening with Beethoven‘s String Quartet in C minor, the ensemble brought out the composer‘s dramatic passages to the full, particularly the repetitions of three escalating spaced notes alternating with melodic sequences. St. John‘s playing in the scherzo was of lace-fine delicacy.
There was a swingy impetus to the menuetto. Fewer, who sat downstage stage right, captured one‘s attention throughout the concert with his impassioned and physically expressive playing. At times, one felt he would leave his chair and become airborne in a dance.
The Canadian piece, Kohelet, was, we were told, inspired by a passage in Ecclesiastes and also by a play written by minimalist Samuel Beckett. Impressionistic in style, its pulsing sounds evoked turning wheels, and later in a quiet section, the musicians created droning and twanging sounds.
After the intermission, cellist Constanza introduced the music with an easy charm. (He also got the house lights turned on
sufficiently for the audience to read their programs.)
He told us that Schubert wrote this innovative quartet, mixing minor and major keys, only a few years before his tragically early death at the age of 31. He also said this quartet in G major may have influenced Beethoven, his contemporary, also to experiment with changes of key.
Beginning with the allegro, played with sparkling precision, we recognized the quartet‘s ability to give colour and dramatic quality to their playing. In the scherzo, a ripe cello passage led the other instruments into a beautiful solo by Fewer as first violin.
Dazzled by the technical brilliance and fiery interpretation of Schubert‘s work, the audience rose to give the St. Lawrence String Quartet a well-deserved standing ovation.
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