Distant bodies: JACK Quartet plays Elliott Carter
Elliott Carter string quartets
JACK Quartet
Wigmore Hall
Stalls C3, £5 (under-35)
6 April 2019
Wigmore page
Programme
String Quartet No. 4
String Quartet No. 2
String Quartet No. 3
As the JACK Quartet would you oppose comparison to the Arditti, or would you crave it? JACK is, to put it mildly, an eminently safe pair of hands for the Carter. Their methodical precision, unruffled glamour and alert musicality make them an open conduit for the violence of Carter’s expression, a violence that rips at music even as it reaffirms its foundations. And yet… I wonder if there isn’t something too unruffled about the JACK, that the edge of spontaneity and animation of the Arditti always casts a shadow.
It is, of course, a luxury to have the two to compare, and shadow or no this concert by the JACK was extremely entertaining. The complexity of the Carter hurtles lightyears beyond my comprehension; snatching at its vapour stream I can only grasp a glimmer of the consistencies across the three works, of a hegemonic insistence on the independence of each instrument, of the astrological significance if a given interval, of the rare, inevitable alignment of these lonely bodies. The JACK pursue this music unstintingly, only the beaded brow and occasional grimace suggesting at the toll this music takes.
No comments yet.