Thank you for joining me on this long-form journey that I’ve been promising for nearly a month now!
Big Fish is my forum for posts that need more than 300 words or so. Unlike TWT, these will come out monthly (they take a little longer!) to paid subscribers only (this first one’s going out for free).
On today’s Fish: about a month ago, I caught an incredibly special concert. More on that below.
To many young students of the game, classical music is love. If you grew up playing an instrument seriously like I did, perhaps you also felt that the work ethic around your playing was in frequent conflict with the love ethic of those supporting you (family, teachers, etc.). But many young musicians have, as I had, positive and formative experiences at summer music festivals that reinforce the above notion.
For the first time, they encounter other kids who are under similar work pressure. They meet people who understand them. They form deep friendships. (Of course, it’s not just the context of similar childhood experiences that forms these bonds. Playing music with others, especially chamber music, requires mutual support, sharp emotional intuition, and yes, love.)
Some of my best friends for more than a decade have been the friends I made through the Perlman Music Program, the summer festival I attended for seven years. Among them are the members of the Renaissance String Quartet—violinists Randall Goosby and Jeremiah Blacklow, violist Jameel Martin, and cellist Daniel Hass. When I heard that they were planning their official New York debut for mid-April, I knew I had to attend.
**
It's perhaps unwise to admit as a frequent music reviewer, but there is seldom a classical concert that honestly thrills me. Sure, I get the opportunity to hear a lot of great music and good playing, but rarely do I feel that a program presenting Western art music provides something that challenges or excites me, that’s separate from the mono-cult that rules classical music.
To say that the industry is in crisis is maybe the most smooth-brained way I could open this paragraph, considering that its standard-bearers have been saying the same thing for decades. But to differentiate my take, I believe that there are three major factors driving this decline.
Firstly, one must consider classical music’s alienation from the academia of economic and political histories. By inhabiting largely separate academic spaces (conservatories) from other disciplines, a classical music education touches only superficially on the societal forces that have shaped what works get created by who, and when. This results in many performers who have a limited consciousness of or interest in how their work actually functions economically and culturally in a contemporary society.
Next, one must maintain awareness of the bluff perpetuated by elitist institutions, who use mainstream liberal language of DEI to disguise the extent to which the canon and narrative arc of classical music’s history are still constructed primarily in relation to ultra-wealth. While the days of royal and parochial patronage systems have faded, classical music today retains its proximity to extreme wealth as a survival strategy. Now, though, this process is achieved through a noxious duality of messaging. “We want to be inclusive, change our audiences, program more works by underrepresented composers, etc.,” these institutions say. Meanwhile, their embrace of identity politics is often shockingly superficial and borne from the profit motive of attracting new and younger audiences, not an attempt to ‘do better.’ Programming decisions are still largely driven by and reflective of the tastes of billionaire donors. This is why institutions have simply picked a handful of new composers to canonize as proof that they are ‘doing the work,’ while continuing to ignore and belittle decades of works from ‘other genres’ which satisfy all criteria to be considered art music but do not reflect the preferred messages or content of the billionaire class. (Please, try and argue with me that JPEGMAFIA is not an art musician but a popular musician—please, I’m begging you.)
Lastly, I think it’s important to note that the conventions of performance practice have become less heterogeneous, more polished, and less exciting. There are tons of diverse stylistic choices in old recordings—players like Kreisler, Gitlis, and Schering couldn’t sound more different from each other. But a relatively recent, field-wide embrace of the ideology that a composer’s markings are sacrosanct has resulted in a marked downturn in this sonic diversity. But it's not just the historical—elements of contemporary pedagogy are also responsible for this reduction. Nowadays, there are myriad players with similar educations whose playing has similar sound priorities. Furthermore, there seems to be a greater emphasis than ever on technical perfection, lessening performers’ willingness to take real risks.
All this to say—I find it easy to feel pessimistic about the functions that this cottage historical-performance industry fulfills. But I knew if there was one group that could problematize these sour expectations and put a smile on my face, it would be the Renaissance boys. I’ve shared many a late-night conversation with these guys about the issues above and know that they are attempting to confound them. And boy, did they ever.
**
At the top, Randall told the audience of friends and strangers, classical music insiders and outsiders, that the group hoped to surprise us. Then he sat down and the group ripped immediately into Beethoven’s towering Große Fuge with shocking and satisfying ferocity.
People don’t play this piece like the end of the world enough. Groups are, perhaps rightly, concerned with mastery of the score, with coherence. But I have long felt that there is an element to this piece that, despite its rigorous order, is supposed to feel like your brain coming apart. It is manic, jumpy, and full of idiosyncrasy.
Renaissance prioritized the latter spirit to impressive effect. With truly foreboding group pianissimos, menacing fortissimos, and hysterical, horizontal drive across phrases, they just…went for it. I heard a more manicured Fuge only a few weeks before, but I’d take this performance ten times out of ten.
Their refreshing audacity continued into their performance of Mozart’s String Quartet K.575. There were a multitude of glissandos, dynamic choices, and sonic textures not remotely called for in the score, but every single one came off. Mozart was pretty widely known as a wild guy with a silly spirit. This was the rare contemporary performance of Mozart that properly emphasizes this jubilance.
The second half featured the music of Daniel himself, a prolific composer across genre lines. Though I suppose he happens to be a white person, he’s creating works like his First String Quartet which could meaningfully expand the sonic diversity of the field. It’s clearly music from a mind that’s just as familiar with Hendrix as Steve Reich, as comfy with Nat King Cole as with Thomas Ades, as aware of XXYYXX as it is Paul Wiancko. It’s full of harmonic invention, drama, and some dirty, dirty solos. It’s brilliant. I think anyone would enjoy this piece heartily, from college students with pop-heavy listening diets to yes, billionaires, too.
It is also clearly, touchingly, written to play to the strengths of its premiere performers, and they played the absolute shit out of it. Randall’s virtuosity, Jeremiah’s interrogative spirit, Daniel’s rhythmic solidity, and Jameel’s storytelling spoke loudly and clearly. Of course, these guys can (and often did) match sounds as well as anyone in appropriate moments, a frequent obsession of contemporary quartets. But unlike many of their peers, they’re not afraid to, when called for, lean deeply into the heterogeneity of their sounds to create drama as well. Each of their individual characters felt essential in powering the quartet’s most exciting moments.
Finally, the group closed with Daniel’s arrangement of Bob Marley’s “Satisfy My Soul.” Much of the time that I hear non-classical music reworked for string quartet, the new instrumentation limits the effectiveness of the original source music and has insufficient aura as a standalone product. Couldn’t be further from the truth of Daniel’s arrangement, though. His impressive textural invention gave the song an array of new aspects while maintaining the spirit of the tune, whose inclusion likely delighted audiences on the Quartet’s recently completed tour of Jamaica. Honestly, just check this one out on their Instagram—it will do it better service than me talking about it at greater length. You’ll be happy you did!
**
Looking around the hall after the concert, I was glad to see some power players from some of New York’s premiere classical institutions present. This was not surprising—as a consequence of our shared musical education, after all, they (and I) have had the privilege to learn from some of classical music’s most established and powerful voices.
And as I Ubered up to Riverside Park with the boys to celebrate their successful debut, I found myself in a reflective mood, hoping that these influential folks realized the significance of this evening. I hoped they recognize the love, the edge, the humor, the subversion—all the elements that made this debut so startlingly original. It’s not many performers who are courageous (or established) enough to push back against quietly repressive industry norms. But here are the chosen few—let’s hope those with financial, academic, and cultural power take proper notice. This is the blueprint for saving the field that, despite its faults, we love.
