CSOradio
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CSOradio
When four Chicago Symphony string players are alone together on the stage of Symphony Center, it’s the chance to be the center of attention.
The Winter Quartet, consisting of CSO musicians, will present a concert of Stravinsky, Schulhoff and Bartók on March 24 at Orchestra Hall, as part of the CSO Chamber Music series. The series lets both audiences and musicians broaden their horizons beyond the experience of listening to a full orchestra.
“It helps audiences to hear us individually, and it helps us to get to know our colleagues,” said CSO violin Cornelius Chiu.
Performing as a small group is “a chance to be featured on every note we play,” said CSO viola and group leader Danny Lai. It’s a rare opportunity for string players, who are usually part of a much larger section.
As the organizer for the Winter Quartet, Lai is responsible for hiring personnel and for arranging logistical details such as ensuring everyone has a suitable edition of the music. Chiu frequently organizes his own quartet, but was happy to step in as a guest violinist for this performance.
There is competition for slots on the CSO Chamber Music series, so Lai has to be mindful about what he proposes. In this case, he has come up with a program with a clear thematic connection. Bartók, who opposed both the Nazis and fascism in his native Hungary, emigrated to the United States in 1940, and Lai hears foreshadowings of World War II in the quartet, written a year earlier.
Similarly, the Stravinsky piece was written in 1914, on the eve of World War I, and Lai said, “It’s nothing like any quartet you’d ever think of. It breaks the form.” And Erwin Schulhoff, composer of the third piece on the program, was Jewish and Czech and died of pneumonia in a Nazi concentration camp in 1942.
“Bartók is one of my favorite composers,” Lai said, and on the chamber series, “as CSO musicians, we take a lot of joy in performing there, because we’re free to play whatever we want to play.”
The composer’s six quartets are monuments of the repertoire, and Chiu has played them all, at various venues around the city, over his 30 years with the CSO. The sixth, which will be featured on the Symphony Center program, is actually more approachable than some of the others, Chiu said, “very inward, very beautiful, and it ends in kind of a spooky way — introverted and touching.”
Everyone is on the edge of their seat for a Symphony Center quartet rehearsal, Lai said, “because we’ve all sat in so many orchestra rehearsals, and we have an idea of what an efficient rehearsal looks like.”
Usually, he said, the group will play straight through once to see where they stand, and then they discuss — or argue. “In an orchestra of this caliber, everyone has opinions,” he said. “In the moment, arguments never feel good, but I do like being challenged. Sometimes it produces something that resonates.”
Cellist Olivia Jakyoung Huh, who just joined the symphony last fall, is “a great player, very sensitive, and very enthusiastic,” Lai said. “That’s the great thing about young players.” Violinist Gabriela Lara is also new, and “it’s really fun to see how we gel.”
“We get to know each other this way,” Chiu said. Playing chamber music, like touring, is a rare opportunity for busy musicians to socialize together, he said. “It’s really wonderful that I can connect with [musicians of] my kids’ generation and share ideas.”
