jwilzewske: Borromeo String Quartet: eBach

T his program is about the greatness and the ‘open-endedness’ of Bach’s music, and about letting Bach’s music meet a new set of tools... When Bach played the organ, he was known for making beautiful and unexpected combinations of stops (the sets of pipes that make a certain sound). With this electronically-processed string quartet arrangement, we are going to bring a new set of ‘stops’ into play.”
— Nicholas Kitchen, @TheGardner interview with Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum staff, OCT-2010.

T he Borromeo String Quartet’s [Mai Motobuchi, viola, Yeesun Kim, cello, and Nicholas Kitchen and Kristopher Tong, violins] performance tonight at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall included Bartók’s String Quartet No. 6 and Beethoven’s String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 127.

B ut the sheer novelty of this program was embodied by ‘Bach’s Electric Chords’, Nicholas Kitchen’s string quartet arrangement of Bach’s ‘Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor’, BWV 582, with electronic processing. Warning: If novel reworking of Bach inherently offends you, then read no further.

T he passacaglia consists of twenty variations on a theme that Bach famously co-opted from André Raison’s Premier Livre d’orgue of 1688. Many have said that the double fugue in BWV 582 is really a twenty-first variation on that theme—a variation of prodigious, surreal length.

B ach plumbed the limits of the bass melody in BWV 582, to the point where he was able abandon the melody itself from time to time and yet the beautiful mechanism does not quit or fall apart. Emulating Bach’s exploratory spirit, Kitchen pushes the discursive, contrapuntal ‘envelope’ even further. This arrangement is like a string quartet conversation that ranges from one topic to others, to the point where the thread of the conversation matters less than than the flow itself—matters less than the continuation of the self-propelled cameraderie of the celebrants. The piece becomes an expansive meditation on the joy of playing together. There are moments when it is possible to believe in the abrogation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, energy for free, perpetual motion, and Eternal Return. The nature of bowing—as contrasted with keyboards and pedaling—also lends new dimensions to the piece, ones that likely would have pleased Bach himself.

F enner Douglas groups French registrations into four texture-based categories: broad textures [plein jeu (principal chorus, upwards from 16'); grand jeu; fond d’orgue (all principals and flutes at 16', 8', and 4')]; contrapuntal textures [esp. reeds]; melodic textures [cornets; tierces; nazard; voix humane; etc.]; and composite textures... In the Fugue of BWV 582 easily the most interesting is the cross-beat slurring of the first countersubject [in m. 169]... If Bach had asked his [organ] pupils to phrase the countersubject across the beat, some indication of this would have been needed in the score, for it goes against the Baroque practice of placing ‘downbows’ on the ‘good’ notes.”
— Peter Le Huray, p. 104.

T he organ offers a wide range of colors and textures, and so, of course, does the string quartet. The range can be substantially extended when mics and electronic processing are applied. To my taste, Kitchen’s orchestration makes good sense—it is empathetic, not ‘indulgent,’ and the electronic processing does not draw undue attention to itself.

T he chords themselves are intriguingly different when played by a string quartet instead of an organ. For example, the Neapolitan sixth near the conclusion of BWV 582 is not like a C-major chord transposed up a semitone but is instead a dramatic new color, in part because stringed instruments are not confined to equal temperament (12-TET). Unfretted instruments and singers are free to conform their tuning closer, say, to 18th-Century well-temperaments. Then, instead of congenial key-independent uniformity of sound as in ET, with well-temperaments each key has its own distinctive qualities, tensions, dissonances—tensions that would not be evident when playing this Passacaglia and Fugue on a modern organ.

T he tailpiece miking of each of the Borromeos’ instruments was excellent. Each quartet member’s Line6 POD® effects modeler output was routed to a powered QSC K-8® monitor positioned on the stage directly facing the audience. (In the future, I hope that a larger array of more speakers directed in a variety of directions may be possible for BSQ, or, better still, get a sound engineer and a mixing console and adjust the delays properly for the size of the hall.) The succession of effects patches in each part was switched via the foot stomp switches on the Line6 POD®s, in a pattern reminiscent of an organist changing ‘stops’. Each instrument’s soli passages involved switching to a brighter ‘reed’ patch and increasing the volume with the pedal on the right-hand side of the POD® modeler. Other organistic effects included divide-by-two and divide-by-four frequency-division patches that transformed the cello’s signal into 16' and 32' thundering contrabass pipe organ sounds. Light chorusing effects and, toward the end, increasing reverb were among other effects that Kitchen scored in this arrangement.

T he use of the 4 Macintosh laptops and Bili Inc. Footime® digital Page/Score Turners was interesting from another perspective as well. The profile of these is far smaller and lower than standard music stands filled with sheet music. As a result, the laptops on their stands do not present such a big acoustic obstruction between the performers and the audience members as conventional music stands. The cello and the viola are far clearer-sounding compared to normal string quartet configurations. Absolutely beautiful.