Bartok's Fifth String Quartet

February 17, 2009:

Yesterday evening we were privileged to attend a concert by the astounding Arcanto Quartet in the Kammermusiksaal (Chamber Music hall) of the Berlin Philharmonic concert building. I must confess that I had never heard of the group, two women and two men, but they presented a marvelous combination of precision and lyricism.

The performance began with a subtle playing of an extremely delicate work by Henri Dutilleux, an avant garde composer who began composing in the '30's and is still living who who combined the atonal with manifest derivations from Debussy and Ravel. The work, "Ainsi la nuit," was best described as spidery. Magnificent. Then came a spirited Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (the Germans always add the "Bartholdy,") String Quartet Nr. 6 in F-Minor.

The main course came after intermission with an incredible performance of Bartok's Quartet No. 5 (1934). I was absorbed as almost never before by an exquisite piece of music, written as it was as Hungary and the rest of Europe prepared to leave behind tradition and Bartok's loving folk melodies and plunge into darkness. Then, memories came flooding back.

From the fall of 1950 through the spring of 1954 I was an active announcer on the Harvard radio station, WHRB, in those days "broadcast" not by "radiating" from a transmitter but by carrier current (if the receiver were plugged into the University electrical circuitry, the station could be received at 550 on the AM dial.) On further reflection, there was precious little FM if any in those days. The station had a full complement of programming - news off the AP wire, hours of classical music, swing, jazz, Western swing and "hillbilly," not only from Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia but strange Swedish accented folk music from Minnesota. One of the main attractions were the semi-annual "orgies." During the reading periods preceding final exams for each semester, i.e., two week periods with no classes when any self-respecting undergraduate would commence studying for finals for the first time, the station would stay on the air 24 hours a day as a rather dubious study aid for the laggards in the student body. The frosh and sophomore staff in particular were pressed into service to announce during the midnight to eight a.m. shifts.

One disquieting night in the spring of 1951 or 1952, what must be termed a smart-alecky and rogue announcer startled the campus (hard to do then when the reigning norm of behavior was the (in)famous "Harvard indifference," (what is nowadays crudely referred to as "cool") by playing, exactly at the stroke of midnight, all nine Beethoven symphonies consecutively and without interruption. Unheard of, cheeky, scandalous and reeking of lower class behavior. What luxury - what extravagance - we enjoyed!

What to do to follow that act? Pressed then as now to do anything to stand out from the crowd, I hit upon the answer. A few days later, I came on the midnight shift and played all six Bartok quartets in a row. This was the only act of any significance I committed in the whole four years of college. It now appears as something of a lame gesture, but I knew no better than to be proud of myself. The sixth and last of the quartets had been completed only 13 years before. I was 19 years old, and I had admitted myself into the avant garde!

What a gift to have lived long enough to have heard the fifth quartet last night - this time to muster enough repose to listen to it and enjoy it.