Internationally lauded American string quartet Brooklyn Rider, comprising Johnny Gandelsman and Colin Jacobsen, violins, Nicholas Cords, viola and Michael Nicolas, cello, is renowned for its visionary programming and its commissioning of exciting new works.

UKARIA has invited Brooklyn Rider to curate its annual Chamberfest series, and the five concerts demonstrate the extraordinary diversity, flexibility and musical appeal of the string quartet form. The programming ranges from the pioneering works of Haydn to vocal and dance works and to folk influenced works of the Danish String Quartet.

Brooklyn Rider. Photo © Marco Giannavola

The first concert, entitled Citizenship Notes, sets the stage for Brooklyn Rider’s conception of the string quartet — they state, “In Citizenship Notes, the string quartet is posited as a microcosmic democracy, a highly engaged ecosystem with equal voices with clear rights and responsibilities.”

First was Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in F minor, Op. 20 No. 5, written for aristocratic audiences during a period of significant early development and popularisation of the string quartet.

Brooklyn Rider say that “The flattened hierarchy of Haydn’s novel string quartet writing directly mirrors the contemporaneous societal shifts afoot in the Age of Enlightenment.”

The intertwining voices of the Allegro moderato first movement immediately engage the listener with their depth and complexity. The second Menuetto – Trio movement is sweet and delicate, and the Adagio is a gracious dance, with Johnny Gandelsman’s delightful violin arabesques curling around the theme.

In his Op. 20 quartets, Haydn balanced the four instruments, as exemplified in the Finale, Fuga a 2 soggetti of the Opus 20, no. 5, where all four successively take up the themes. The movement finishes with a flourish — a hint of bravado contrasting the work’s genteel character.

American composer Matana Roberts’s confronting borderlands… was commissioned by Brooklyn Rider and refers to the ongoing USA – Mexico border disputes and the urgent need for the recognition of rights, for the healing of the rift and the healing of the affected individuals.

Roberts’s composition involves a graphic score comprising historical data on the border crisis. The performers roll dice before and during their playing, suggesting the element of chance in performance and perhaps adverting to the luck immigrants need to survive. As they begin, each quartet member in turn utters the word ‘borderlands’ and they intermittently read aloud from the score as they play.

It opens with a slow drone, emphasising harmonics, and there are passages of jarring, discordant, agitated playing, with each instrument following its own chance-determined path. It’s a telling piece — one thinks of the perilous journey undertaken by desperate people in hostile border country.

Next was contemporary American composer Gabriel Kahane’s American Studies, a transcription of his song To be American, which reflects on pre 9/11 American life. It begins with the song’s theme before moving into variations, with occasional elements suggesting the folk music fiddle and modernist passages. Kahane’s joyful work suggests happy nostalgic reflections on the many kinds of music he has heard.

Jacobsen’s reimagining of Bob Dylan’s legendary protest song The Times They Are A-Changin’, recalls the political activism of the 1960s, and by performing it together with the compositions by Roberts and Kahane, Brooklyn Rider make searching observations of today’s world.

Jacobsen and Nicolas sing the first lines of Dylan’s song over an arrhythmic, discordant accompaniment that characterises the era, before the music brightens with a folksy flavour.

Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet in C, Op. 59 No. 3, known as the Eroica, one of the quartets written for Count Razumovsky, was written nearly 40 years after Haydn’s Op. 20. As Haydn was Beethoven’s teacher, it’s an ideal bookend to the Haydn.

The first passage of the Introduzione, Andante con moto – Allegro vivace is quiet (sempre pp), dissonant and mournful with the occasional forceful gesture but seeming to lead nowhere. The work suddenly jumps into vivacious life with a seductive violin melody, and the other instruments then join to create a glorious weave of sound.

The long Andante con moto quasi allegretto second movement, in lilting 6/8 time, seems inwardly reflective, and with steady cello pizzicati recurring, it’s like a restrained and perhaps slightly mocking courtly dance.

The Menuetto grazioso lifts the mood and ends on an upward phrase before the finale begins attacca subito — an intense Allegro that again equalises the four voices, opening with agitated flurries of notes successively in each instrument.

Brooklyn Rider’s performance is refined and nuanced throughout the concert and especially in the Haydn and Beethoven quartets.

This immersive Chamberfest series offers a succinct history of the string quartet as a musical form, the possibilities for collaboration and the capacity of the quartet to embrace a wide range of musical genres. Most of all, it shows how music reflects and comments on the society from which it emerges.

Concert 2, Chalk and Soot, is named after a Jacobsen composition and includes Schoenberg’s ground-breaking work for string quartet and voice. Concert 3, Healing Modes, considers the healing properties of music and concert 4, Morning Dances, features dancer Fiona Jopp.

Concert 5, Ever Yours, will feature an octet performed in collaboration with the ANAM String Quartet and an aria from John Adams’s opera Doctor Atomic that portrays J Robert Oppenheimer’s leadership of the development of the atomic bomb.

UKARIA’s Chamberfest continues until 2 November.