Muir showcases Tower's intense 'Night Fields'

MUIR QUARTET, St. Mary's Church, Park City, Thursday.

PARK CITY — The Muir Quartet and composer Joan Tower have enjoyed a fruitful collaboration every summer during their annual residency in Park City.

The Muir — with violinists Peter Zazofsky and Lucia Lin; violist Steve Ansell; and cellist Michael Reynolds — usually plays something by Tower during their stay in the mountain resort, often with the composer at the piano.

Thursday the Muir performed Tower's "Night Fields," a work she wrote for the foursome back in 1994, and a piece they've played here in the past.

One of the major figures today, Tower has her own commanding voice. As a composer, she has never caved in to popular taste. She continually creates works that are substantial, intellectual and demanding on the performer and listener alike — traits that are woefully lacking among many of today's composers.

"Night Fields" is a prime example of her art. One of the finest chamber works to have been written in the past decade, the piece is full of potency and dynamic vitality. It's a short but intense work — 15 minutes of pent-up energy that finally finds release.

The Muir gave a forceful reading of the piece, capturing its restlessness and dramatic drive convincingly.

Less successful artistically and stylistically was Fritz Kreisler's Quartet in A minor, with which the Muir opened the concert. Kreisler's work is difficult to play effectively. Too frequently, performances miss the rich romanticism, the nuances in phrasings, and the subtleties in expression and dynamics. It's a splendid piece that shows Kreisler, who is best remembered today as a composer of delightful salon pieces, from a different angle. It's one of the significant quartets to come from the early 20th century. Unfortunately, the Muir didn't give a performance that did the work justice. The first and third movements were lethargic and mechanical. The finale, which shows Kreisler in his Viennese mood in its easygoing and lighthearted nature, was done with exaggerated gestures and an over-the-top performance.

It was only in the second movement that the Muir managed to capture something of the subdued sparkle Kreisler was striving to create.

The final work on Thursday's concert was Beethoven's Quartet in E flat major, op. 127.

Beethoven's late quartets — with the exception of the op. 135, in which he returns to classical structure and proportions — are noted for their grand schemes, their bold gestures and for the way in which Beethoven bares his soul, all of which can be found in the op. 127.

The E flat major Quartet contains some of Beethoven's most eloquent and lyrical writing for string quartet. The slow movement, for example, is exquisitely crafted, and filled with poignant lyricism. The Muir captured this wonderfully, giving a persuasive reading that brought out the warm expressiveness effortlessly.

The Muir's performance of the rest of the four-movement quartet was no less articulate, although the third movement was played a little too elegantly and too subdued to capture the fierce yet subtle energy of the music

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