Pacifica Quartet: American Voices
Cedille Records

American Voices, Pacifica Quartet's fourteenth recording for Cedille Records, upholds the high standard of its 2021 Grammy Award-winning Contemporary Voices. With respect to set-list, violinists Simin Ganatra and Austin Hartman, violist Mark Holloway, and cellist Brandon Vamos have made a wise choice in augmenting works by Antonín Dvorák, Florence Price, and Louis Gruenberg with a thought-provoking new one by James Lee III. Melody factors heavily when the string quartets integrate elements of American folk music and spirituals into their frameworks, the result a recording of strong and immediate appeal. Even Lee III's Pitch In, scored for quartet and children's choir, includes an earnestly intoned theme, “People are hungry, yet people continue to waste food,” that stays with you long after the album ends.

The exceptional expressive range and maturity that have distinguished Pacifica's earlier recordings are very much alive and well on its latest. While the group, founded in 1994, is recognized internationally as one of the most renowned chamber ensembles, it hasn't lost its intimate touch and connection to its roots. Perhaps that's attributable in part to its having served as quartet-in-residence at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music for the past decade and before that the Metropolitan Museum of Art and University of Chicago.

Any group will acknowledge the critical role programming plays, and American Voices reflects that to the fullest degree. No better work might be chosen to illustrate the point than Dvorák's String Quartet in F Major, Op. 96 (1893), aka the “American.” The composer's writing elicits from the quartet an exuberant response that's in keeping with the spirit of the material, which is consistent with the composer's 1893 statement that folk songs and Negro melodies “are the folk songs of America.” He wasn't making such a pronouncement from afar but during a three-year period (1892-95) when he was living in New York City and acting as director of the National Conservatory of Music. Two seminal works emerged from that time, his iconic Symphony No. 9, Op. 95 and the “American” string quartet performed with characteristic zeal by Pacifica.

Written in a mere two weeks, the four-movement quartet at times evokes the country directly, as heard in the bird-like ‘warbling' in the rousing third movement and the reference to train locomotion in the high-energy finale. Before that, the feel of a country awakening with optimism and hope is intimated in the vigorous thematic expressions of its glorious opening movement. Plaintive folk-tinged episodes alternate with robust passages as Pacifica makes its way through the lustrous material. The tender and at times sombre second movement is given a deeply affecting reading by the group. At every moment, the composer's music breathes authenticity, and the quartet honours the work with a performance marked by musicality, engagement, and conviction. It's also fitting that Dvorák's should be sequenced first when the others follow from it in different ways.

In writing her String Quartet No. 1 in G Major in 1929, Price drew for inspiration from him and specifically his use of American folk music elements in the “New World” Symphony. In contrast to her first symphony, which overtly references specific American folk influences (e.g., a hymn tune in its slow movement), her first string quartet alludes to them generally in the folk song-like tone of its melodies, ones she heard in her native Little Rock, Arkansas before moving to Chicago in 1927. The two-part work opens with outpourings of nostalgic longing before yielding to tremulous voicings of folk melodies in the lyrical second movement.

A Dvorák connection continues in the case of Gruenberg in that the then eight-year-old was a NYC student studying piano at the National Conservatory in America when Dvorák was serving as director. Gruenberg likewise absorbed American sounds and later drew upon them when fashioning his own orchestral and operatic works. His material deftly combines elements of formal classical writing and film soundtracks (nominated for Academy Awards three times, he produced almost thirty movie scores), making for works of populist appeal, including the nine-minute Four Diversions for String Quartet, Op. 32 (1930) performed by Pacifica. After an irreverent opening allegro that's as insistent as a bumblebee, the second movement's ear-catching in its sinuosity; the dance-inflected third swoons rapturously, while the concluding allegro is devilishly rambunctious.

August 2024