(L-R) Violinists Simon Maurer and Dana Allaband, cellist Gerall Hieser and violist Agnès Maurer perform Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" string quartet.
Writing and photos by Wes Cipolla
Originally published in the Pottsville Republican-Herald on October 2, 2022.
Wes Cipolla
SCHUYLKILL HAVEN - “I am not as horrible as you think. You will sleep very well in my arms.”
So spoke New Ringgold violinist Simon Maurer, quoting Death at Jerusalem Lutheran Church in Schuylkill Haven Sunday.
The words of Death come from the poem “Death and the Maiden,” which inspired one of Franz Schubert’s (1797-1828) most famous string quartets.
Maurer and his Gabriel Chamber Ensemble played the quartet’s first movement, and other pieces which reflected the full spectrum of human emotions and frailties, at their season-opening concert Sunday. Most prominently, their music illustrated the greatest flaw of human life - its finite nature.
“And so she succumbs to death,” Maurer said, describing the fate of the poem’s titular Maiden.
Edgy and rollicking from beginning to end, “Death and the Maiden” represents the anxiety and futility of humanity’s endless attempts to escape death. This endless struggle, set to music, effortlessly segues between pleasant and disturbing, between the fleeting pleasures of mortality and the looming threat of it. Maurer and fellow violinist Dana Allaband, violist Agnès Maurer (Simon’s wife) and cellist Gerall Hieser performed an adrenaline-fueled dance with death. Like life itself, it often comes dangerously close to a bombastic finale, but continues anyway. The Quartet survives until the end, when it accepts its fate peacefully and quietly.
Pianist Xun Pan joined Agnès to perform the first movement of Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979)’s Sonata for Viola and Piano, some of the finest music ever heard from the Ensemble.
The Sonata, a work of stirring romanticism awash in a sea of torment, is fresh, sinus-clearing and undeniably modern even a century after its composition. The indelible echo of Pan’s piano, mixed with the haunted swooning of Agnès’s viola, created an effect of bleak beauty. The technique, as always, was impeccable. As she played, Agnès’s face was the face of an artist completely in her element. Pan’s playing was deeply focused.
After all of this heaviness, Simon introduced Pablo de Saraste’s (1844-1908) “sugarcoated” Navarre for Two Violins and Piano, named after the Spanish region of the composer’s birth. It was a treacly confection with birdlike high notes, extensive plucking and Spanish flair. It has the sound of a carefree celebration, such as a village fiesta or wedding. It is an occasion for the community to gather and enjoy beautiful, happy music.
This diversion was followed by the epic Piano Quintet in G Minor of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), which involved all five musicians. The Quintet is music to get lost in. It is pure emotional turmoil placed in a compact, staggeringly modern package, with melodic complexity that Simon aptly compared to Bach. The Quintet has the beating heart, streamlined sleekness and emotional outbursts of a wild panther. Whether that panther is chasing its prey, licking its wounds or drinking from the deep, dark watering hole of Pan’s piano is something that can change in a second. Once again, Pan uses his piano to enter a new world of sound, showing his range handling every possible application of the instrument. Him and the Quintet, with its great emotional breadth, are a perfect match. It delves into a smorgasbord of musical ideas which call to mind the mortal urgency of “Death and the Maiden.”
Without a single word, it captures these ideas with incredible grace and requires its players to do the same. The Gabriel Chamber Ensemble was certainly up to the challenge.