“The Noise of Time” – The Emerson Quartet’s Nod To Shostakovich’s Torment

“What exactly is an idea? Is it a feeling, a sense of a possibility? Or is it a myriad of tiny bits of mental energy which somehow come together in one big flash? Or is it the big flash occurring first, followed by the aftershocks and then, hopefully, the strong feeling that this really is a good idea?”
Philip Setzer, Violinist, The Emerson String Quartet, from his own program notes to “The Noise of Time.”

The Epinions database doesn’t list the live multimedia program “The Noise of Time” under the any of the works of Dmitri Shostakovich performed by the world famous, Grammy-winning Emerson String Quartet, which is probably appropriate because I’ve never seen or heard anything like this. Hence this posting of a most unusual Emerson String Quartet PERFORMANCE of ONE of the quartets under the product category of an Emerson RECORDING of ALL his quartets.

Shostakovich’s 15th quartet was his last, composed just before the Russian musical genius died in Moscow more than a quarter century ago. Though the Emerson has performed and recorded all of his quartets to worldwide acclaim, it was this last morbid, haunting piece that most appealed to Setzer.

My wife first met Setzer about six years ago when his daughter took ballet lessons from her in suburban New York City. One of the most unassuming people you’ll ever meet, Setzer would occasionally be the one who would drop his daughter off at my wife’s class the few times he wasn’t on tour around the world. Already back then, hanging around in the ballet studio waiting room, she recalls him mentioning in passing that he was working on a special idea of great import.

And then we moved to Los Angeles in mid-1998, and she lost touch. Last weekend my wife noticed by chance a story in the Los Angeles Times about the last in a series of performances by the Emerson String Quartet later that night at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse. The article said the program featured a most unusual performance of Shostakovich’s 15th quartet that, reviewer Mark Swed wrote, has helped “reinvent the presentation of string quartet music.” A few hours and a mad rush to the box office later we were seated in the theater, proud holders of what the box office attendant told us were two of the last ten tickets available for the sold-out performance.


DRAMATIC EXECUTION RESURRECTS A LIFE OF PAIN:
Shostakovich’s 15th quartet in E-flat minor (1974) is not easy listening. Only 35-minutes long, it carries with it the anguish of a tormented soul in six movements with no pauses. It is considered by many musical experts to be the most daunting of all string quartets because of the emotional as well as physical toll it takes on the musicians. Shostakovich’s own life was a roller coaster ride of acclaim and derision, recognition and banishment within his own country. It ended with his deal with the devil – an accommodation first with Stalin and then with the Communist Party that, though it allowed his music to be performed, cost him the respect of many of his contemporary artists, and presumably his own self respect as well.

Setzer’s idea was to set the quartet to a theatrical piece that would bring the composer's personal torment to life. He found a willing ear in Jane Moss, Vice President of Programming at Lincoln Center, who helped raise funds for the project and equally importantly approached Briton Simon McBurney to stage and direct it. Setzer went to see McBurney’s Complicite theater group, and was immediately convinced Moss had picked the right man to conceive of execute the theatrical portion of the project.

Setzer’s program notes indicate that from the beginning McBurney wanted the actors to “feel” Shostakovich’s anguish. He mentions that in one memorable rehearsal the quartet played the piece from the four corners of a studio with the actors and McBurney lying on the floor in the middle listening to the music.

The result is simply stunning. The first half of the program is a 45-minute high-speed montage of effects including authentic radio and film newsreels of Shostakovich and his time, photo montages, and snatches of music and flashing strobe lights around four acrobatic actors who mix mime and dance in a dramatic and energetic portrayal of a genius’ state of mind. As critic Swed so correctly wrote in his March 22, 2002 Los Angeles Times review, “We must be transported back into a society in which music was dangerous, in which Stalin could act as a lethal music critic; in which Shostakovich, a neurotic man to begin with, carried the weight of oppression on his trembling shoulders….It as though we enter into the dying man’s delirium.”

Then the musicians take over. While the actors become slow motion mimes in the background throughout, the quartet opens with the four musicians appearing one by one in the four corners of the graded theatrical stage. Though four chairs remain center stage in traditional quartet formation, the musicians play with no sheet music in front of them, while either standing or walking with the exception of cellist David Finckel..

This is an extraordinarily difficult feat, made all the more so by two factors. First, the musicians never face each other as most seated quartets do. They face the audience, which contributes to the electric sense of communication. Second, the musicians have to make some deft physical maneuvers on a graded theater stage that is titled toward the audience, moving around actors and props under alternating darkness and flash or strobe effects. At one point, in the midst of the quartet, Setzer has to lean over in dramatic slow motion with one foot on a slightly raised platform – not unlike a mime actor – and pick up a chair lying on its side as a result of an outburst by one of the actors, all the while holding his violin and bow. Backstage after the show (with his wife and daughter unexpectedly in tow on a vacation, both pleasantly surprised to see my wife) Setzer told us that during a dress rehearsal in London he almost did a split when the platform on which he rested his one foot moved just as he grabbed the chair.


SUMMARY:
Though I enjoy classical music, I’m far from an expert. What I can say about this performance is that as difficult as it is to endure the tortuousness of Shostakovich’s anguished music in his 15th Quartet, the overall spectacle is an extraordinary experience that stimulates all of the audience’s senses. Critics have said the entire concept has rejuvenated the Emerson, which, they say, was getting stale after years of commercial and critical success.

I believe this hybrid art form actually makes the more complex classical pieces more accessible to audiences by establishing a visceral context for the music that follows. This particular concert, we were told, was being recorded live by the BBC.

I had heard Shostakovich before – most notably his 5th and 7th Symphonies – but I never really felt I understood him until last Saturday night. The impression was vivid, and will last me a lifetime.

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The Emerson Quartet is Philip Setzer and Eugene Drucker, violins; Lawrence Dutton, viola; and David Finckel, cello. The Complicite Theater perfomers were Richard Katz, Toby Sedgwick, Robert Tannion and Tom Ward, directed by Simon McBurney.