Momenta Quartet presents its annual Momenta Festival September 15-18, 2022 (rescheduled from June). All four concerts will be at the Broadway Presbyterian Church (601 W 114th St. New York, NY), and admission is free.The seventh edition of the festival features four diverse chamber music programs each curated by a different member of the quartet. In this insider interview, we spoke with two members the quartet about their unique programs.
The September 17 program is curated by violinist Alex Shiozaki and features special guests Nana Shi (piano) and David Byrd-Marro (horn) with works by Hiroumi Mogi, Brahms, and Grażyna Bacewicz.
Could you tell us about the music of Grażyna Bacewicz?
The Polish composer and violinist Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969) reminds me of quite a few mid-20th century composers who balanced an advanced sense of tonality--bordering on atonality--with great emotional content. Many of Bacewicz’s earlier works leaned more in the Romantic direction. I was already familiar with the relatively early Sonata No. 3 for Violin and Piano as well as the Quartet for Four Violins, both of which were written in a more romantic and almost neo-Classical idiom.
Her music hits all the right buttons with me: some drama, some dissonance, some classicism, all in a well-balanced and well-written package. Certainly it helps that she was an accomplished violinist as well as a composer, and the notes lie well under the fingers. As a relatively late work, the Piano Quintet No. 2 leans farther away from familiar harmonies while raising the drama and suspense. The fiery virtuosity and tense melodies will keep you on the edge of your seat--as it does for us, too! I am ecstatic that we will be joined by pianist Nana Shi (who is also my wife), who will be making her third appearance on the Momenta Festival.
The program includes a piece you recently premiered – In Memory of Perky Pat. How did this piece come about?
In addition to playing great works from the distant and recent past, Momenta is all about discovering the music of today and giving it several hearings.
We premiered Hirofumi Mogi’s In Memory of Perky Pat (for horn and string quartet) at Music From Japan’s 2022 Festival concert in New York City. We were joined by the terrific horn player David Byrd-Marrow, and had such a good time performing the piece that we decided to do it again! Inspired by the Philip K. Dick short story “The Days of Perky Pat”, this piece also reignited my interest in classic science fiction and led to an all-night binge of a collection of PKD short stories.
The September 18th program is curated by violinist Emilie-Anne Gendron and includes works by Mario Davidvosky, Julian Carillo, Beethoven, and the world premiere of a quartet by David Glaser written in memoriam Davidovsky.
What did Mario Davidovsky mean to you and the quartet?
Mario Davidovsky’s music figures prominently in creation of Momenta Quartet. In 2004, the composer Matthew Greenbaum invited our violist Stephanie to put together a group that would perform Davidovsky’s String Trio for events celebrating Judaism and Culture at Symphony Space and at Temple University. This proto-Momenta, as it were, so enjoyed playing together that they decided to add another violinist and form a quartet. From then the group’s evolution was set into motion: a few member changes later (as is common and natural in the vast majority of groups) and here we are.
I never had the chance to meet Mario Davidovsky before his passing in the summer of 2019, but I knew of him as one of the compositional giants of our time.
My own first experience playing Davidovsky’s music arose during the very strange summer of 2020. I had recently become associated with the annual Composers Conference, a summer festival devoted in large part to embracing contemporary music and emerging composers (and which Davidovsky directed for 50 years). In August 2020, the Conference planned a Mario Davidovsky virtual memorial concert consisting of his complete set of Synchronisms. (The “Synchronisms” series consists of 12 independent works composed over 40 years for various combinations of acoustic instruments and tape. The pieces are particularly visionary for their exploration of melding such disparate sound worlds.)
I was invited to be one of the performers for his Synchronisms No. 2 for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and tape. With COVID still very much disrupting in-person work, my collaborators and I met via Zoom to discuss matters of interpretation, practiced our parts individually with the tape and a click track, recorded each of our parts separately (with the conductor tuning in on Zoom to oversee and unify each performance)—after which our tracks were all overlaid and stitched together to form the virtual concert. Despite all the disconnection, the experience sticks in my mind fondly as being one of my first “real” projects to arise post-lockdown, indicating hope that we might one day be performing again. I was intrigued by the color, variety, whimsy, and sheer imagination of the Synchronisms. Synchronisms No. 9 (for solo violin and tape) was on my repertoire wish-list, and I am looking forward to performing it on this year’s Momenta Festival.
The other Davidovsky-related strand: The New York-based composer David Glaser had agreed to write a new quartet for the Momenta Festival. I had no idea until seeing the finished score a few months ago that David decided to dedicate this work in memory of his teacher and mentor Mario Davidovsky. In the spirit of honoring the various past influences that go into forming what we are today, it seemed only natural to program a Davidovsky piece alongside David’s quartet, hence the inclusion of Synchronisms No. 9 on my concert.
What’s the significance of ending the program with Beethoven’s “Serioso” Quartet? (Why Beethoven? Why this quartet?)
The short answer as to “why Beethoven?” and “why this quartet?”: practicality. Perhaps I shouldn’t be revealing how the sausage is made, so to speak—but when it comes to programming decisions, not all of our reasons are highbrow! Sometimes it’s just because we happen to have been playing a piece we love recently, and so it’s logical to include it on a festival program – particularly one on which there are several less familiar works we are preparing with finite rehearsal time. Also, as a quartet that frequently focuses on new works and premieres, we savor any chance we get to delve into standard-repertoire pieces via repeated performances.
The “Serioso” has been on our quartet’s wish-list for as long as I can remember. Originally, our violist Stephanie had conceived of a festival program for Fall 2020 on which “Serioso” would be juxtaposed with avant-garde German-Argentinian composer Mauricio Kagel’s surrealist 1971 film “Ludwig van,” and featuring a top-notch lineup of improvisers who would collaborate with Momenta. With that in mind, we even began rehearsing the “Serioso” in early 2020, but of course, the pandemic threw all sorts of future planning into disarray. As the pandemic progressed, our programming timelines naturally fluctuated. The subsequent Momenta Festival ended up taking place virtually in June of 2021 (thanks to the generous assistance of the Americas Society) but for that one, we had already decided to program another Beethoven work, the monumental Grosse Fuge, for Alex’s program. We finally reprised “Serioso” for the 2021-22 season and had a pretty good idea that it would go on this festival. As various ideas were thrown around, and as guest artists and aesthetic considerations gradually fell into place, for a while it spent time on each of our programs. In the end, my colleagues generously let me have it, but the truth is that each one of us could (and did) come up with some version of a program that interestingly juxtaposed the Beethoven with contemporary and lesser-known works (a hallmark of a typical Momenta concert).
As for why it ends the program: despite its condensed length, this piece is an emotional heavyweight. It is brusque, restless, tense, emotionally raw, and often violent.
Other than the coda, which is disarmingly fleet and joyful, the vast majority of the work feels like an existential scream into the void—after which, what more can possibly be uttered?