Spring Break
Lydian String Quartet attracts Non-Brandeis Audience
by Evan Parks
Music | 11/13/07
Posted online at 9:21 PM EST on 11/12/07
/ Last updated at 12:05 PM EST on 11/12/07
If the median age of audience members at a sold-out Lydian String Quartet recital Saturday night was approximately 68 years, does this reflect poorly on the average Brandeis student's involvement with the University's fine arts resources and programming? My hunch is yes.
Saturday night's performance at Slosberg Recital Hall featured a particularly wide showcase of these resources. In addition to the quartet's characteristic ease and fluidity, the show included a piano quintet by Brandeis' own Yaddo-dwelling, Pulitzer short-listed Prof. David Rakowski (ENG). It is clear from a glance at his Web site that he eschews any conventional pretenses designed to detach the artist from his audience ("I'm not the self-promoting type. [I was born without that gene.] I don't have a manager or publicist, and I occupy a portion of the Brandeis Web site anyway"), and his music flows with a similarly idiosyncratic warmth and accessibility.
Inspired by his observation of a great blue heron, the "Disparate Measures" quintet contrasts the bird's cumbersome launch with the grace of his flight by pairing harsher opening chords with a more playful, repetitive "flying" theme. What stood out most from the quintet, however, was the out-of-place adagio movement, a haunting homage to Morton Feldman, that drew out and repeated long, high notes to produce an impressively ethereal effect. Rakowski was at his best when he strayed from representation and virtuosity and focused on what John Cage (himself a veteran of Slosberg) called "the imitation of nature in her manner of operation, or the sobering and quieting of the mind."
The remainder of the program was simply delightful. The Lydian Quartet opened with an abrasive but extremely lively Piazzolla tango, and it concluded by navigating Beethoven's six-movement Op. 130 with a deft mastery.
So why, the question looms, were there so few students in attendance? Rakowski may not be a world-famous musician, yet he is clearly talented and thoughtfully devoted to influencing the future of music. Why are so few students aware of his existence and presence on campus? I'm not sure how exactly to answer these questions, but I would (ironically) point to the iPod as something symptomatic (or causal) of this atrophy of student engagement. Music on college campuses has descended into a commodity rather than an outlet; few people I know here could muster the wherewithal to devote a Saturday evening to a recital.
This is our University. It exists as what students make of it, and the more engaged we are with our resources, the more we take ownership of our environment. It is shameful that Saturday night's excellent program was detached from the student body, only existing to serve the outside public and pad the University's reputation.
Had the theater been (even half!) filled with an assortment of coiffed and thoughtful undergraduates rather than an assemblage of the local elderly community (who are far less equipped than undergraduates to digest something like Rakowski's piece), our campus would be more vibrant and engaged for it.
Saturday night's performance at Slosberg Recital Hall featured a particularly wide showcase of these resources. In addition to the quartet's characteristic ease and fluidity, the show included a piano quintet by Brandeis' own Yaddo-dwelling, Pulitzer short-listed Prof. David Rakowski (ENG). It is clear from a glance at his Web site that he eschews any conventional pretenses designed to detach the artist from his audience ("I'm not the self-promoting type. [I was born without that gene.] I don't have a manager or publicist, and I occupy a portion of the Brandeis Web site anyway"), and his music flows with a similarly idiosyncratic warmth and accessibility.
Inspired by his observation of a great blue heron, the "Disparate Measures" quintet contrasts the bird's cumbersome launch with the grace of his flight by pairing harsher opening chords with a more playful, repetitive "flying" theme. What stood out most from the quintet, however, was the out-of-place adagio movement, a haunting homage to Morton Feldman, that drew out and repeated long, high notes to produce an impressively ethereal effect. Rakowski was at his best when he strayed from representation and virtuosity and focused on what John Cage (himself a veteran of Slosberg) called "the imitation of nature in her manner of operation, or the sobering and quieting of the mind."
The remainder of the program was simply delightful. The Lydian Quartet opened with an abrasive but extremely lively Piazzolla tango, and it concluded by navigating Beethoven's six-movement Op. 130 with a deft mastery.
So why, the question looms, were there so few students in attendance? Rakowski may not be a world-famous musician, yet he is clearly talented and thoughtfully devoted to influencing the future of music. Why are so few students aware of his existence and presence on campus? I'm not sure how exactly to answer these questions, but I would (ironically) point to the iPod as something symptomatic (or causal) of this atrophy of student engagement. Music on college campuses has descended into a commodity rather than an outlet; few people I know here could muster the wherewithal to devote a Saturday evening to a recital.
This is our University. It exists as what students make of it, and the more engaged we are with our resources, the more we take ownership of our environment. It is shameful that Saturday night's excellent program was detached from the student body, only existing to serve the outside public and pad the University's reputation.
Had the theater been (even half!) filled with an assortment of coiffed and thoughtful undergraduates rather than an assemblage of the local elderly community (who are far less equipped than undergraduates to digest something like Rakowski's piece), our campus would be more vibrant and engaged for it.
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