The University’s School of Music is bringing a piece of French culture to campus through classical music.
The Ysaye Quartet, an internationally famous chamber music group of two violins, a viola and a cello, is coming to the University Chamber Music Series on Tuesday. Since it was founded in 1984, the group has played all over the world, but this will be their first appearance in Oregon.
The Chamber Music Series hosts six performances a year strictly in the genre of chamber music. Chamber music is a small group of musicians (three to eight on average) who play together. Other special features of chamber music are that generally each instrument plays a different part, and the group plays without a conductor.
To an inexperienced listener, this may not sound like anything special, but Janet Stewart, assistant dean of the music school, said the listeners must understand the meaning of the performance to enjoy it.
“There has to be a feeling between the performers,” Stewart said. “Because there is no conductor imposing the dynamics of the music, it has to be worked out by the musicians. It’s the classical equivalent of a jazz jam.”
To help audiences understand the performance better, there will be a musical insight lecture given by Robert Hurwitz, professor of music theory, an hour before the concert. Hurwitz, however, is not fond of the title “lecture.”
“To me, it’s more like a tour guide,” he said. “If you just go to the concert without knowing the music, you won’t always know how to get through it.”
In preparation for these presentations, Hurwitz researches any composers that he doesn’t already have knowledge about and listens repeatedly to the pieces that will be played all in the attempt to divine some connections that will help the audience.
“My goal is to help people enjoy something on a higher level than they would if they didn’t come to the lecture,” Hurwitz said.
The quartet’s University performance will be joined by a pianist and a solo violinist. These musicians will play the first piece together and join the quartet for the final piece. The second piece will be played by the quartet alone. They will play a Debussy violin sonata, Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major and Chausson’s Concerto for Piano, Violin and String Quartet. All three pieces are from French composers around the end of the 19th century.
Stewart said French chamber music is a rare treat because the style is largely dominated by the Germanic music tradition.
“The French music isn’t driven by form as much as it is driven by color,” Stewart said.
Hurwitz has a particular affection for every type of chamber music, regardless of its origins, he said.
“There is a kind of spiritual quality in chamber music that isn’t present in other music,” Hurwitz said. “Something about such small groups striving to reach some huge goal is more emotional.”
The intimacy of chamber music allows for new interpretations of the pieces to emerge, Hurwitz said.
“What if I saw four different performances of Hamlet? Each one will say ‘to be or not to be,’ but in some different way that might make me understand it differently,” he said.
Hurwitz made the point that audiences should come trying to understand the music rather than just listening. Celeste Leger, a student intern for the music school, hopes that other students will be open-minded enough to come.
“A lot of people our age are intimidated by classical music because the tradition is so old,” Leger said.
The concert will be at 8 p.m. Tuesday in Beall Concert Hall. Tickets are $25, $20 and $10 based on seating.