The Lakes Area Music Festival, a Brainerd-based music organization started 15 years ago by Scott Lykins, brought the vivacious Callisto Quartet to the Woman’s Club of Minneapolis on Thursday, part of LAMF’s winter series. The concert featured Mozart and Ravel, with a staggering piece by composer Paul Wiancko, a member of the Kronos Quartet, couched in between them.
The four musicians — Cameron Daly (violin), Gregory Lewis (violin), Eva Kennedy (viola) and Hannah Moses (cello) — met each other in 2016 at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and have won a slew of international awards since then, including the grand prize of the 2018 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. They’re currently in residence at Yale University and at the Queen Elizabeth Music Chapel, in Belgium, and tour internationally.
On Thursday, the musicians sat amid the Woman’s Club ornate mirrors, giant arched windows and high ceilings. Above them hung chandeliers, and on the walls were paintings of women done in various styles surrounding the lounge. The ambience — both with the setting and the intimacy of the group’s music — offered a feeling of being invited to a special private concert at a fancy party.
They began with W. A. Mozart’s String Quartet No. 16 in E-flat Major, easing into the octave jump that launches the first movement with a warm sound before dancing into the chromatic flourish at the beginning of the piece. From there they glided gently into the second movement, before picking up speed for the dance-like Menuetto: Allegro, followed by the breakneck speed of the Allegro vivace movement. Throughout, the quartet demonstrated precision and a lively energy, breathing together through Mozart’s intricate patterns. Daly excelled in the showy first violin part.
Violist Kennedy introduced the second piece, “Lift,” by Paul Wiancko, noting the composer, and the Kronos Quartet, as an inspiration for their own music. Kennedy quoted the composer’s description of the work as a “fervent, celebratory investigation into joy itself.”
Wiancko’s composition is a relentless fever dream of sound and mood making. It explores unusual ways of making sound by the various instruments, with its liberal use of extreme glissandos, copious pizzicato, disquieting harmonics and percussive elements. At times, it was as if the musicians weren’t playing string instruments at all — they made their instruments sound like horns and winds. There even seemed to be a theremin playing in their midst in certain moments.
The last movement of the work, divided into “Glacial,” “Maniacal” and “Lift” sections, proved otherworldly in its textures and sounds. The quartet rode the waves of these shifts with controlled abandon, finally bringing a hint of fiddling sounds into its exuberant and strange finish.
After intermission, the quartet performed Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major. Compared to the Wiancko work, Ravel seems fairly straightforward. Yet there were mysterious melodies, atmospheric wanderings and unusual sounds layered into the lovely work. Generous pizzicato added an edge of suspense to the piece, and there was a strange bell-like sound created in the second movement. Hannah Moses took the lead in Ravel’s third slow movement, evoking a haunting move as the other instruments fluttered above. The piece concluded with chaotic rigor that proved satisfying.
Besides their performance at the Woman’s Club, the Callisto Quartet visited school groups and performed at the Crow Wing County jail. They’ll perform at the Tornstrom Auditorium in Brainerd on Sunday at 2 p.m. Meanwhile, the Lakes Area Music Festival’s next event in its winter series is violinist Chloe Fedor performing solo at the Woman’s Club on Friday, Feb. 16.
The Lakes Area Music Festival
What: Winter Series with Chloe Fedor
When: Friday, Feb. 16
Where: Woman’s Club of Minneapolis, 410 Oak Grove St., Minneapolis
Tickets: $0-$50 at lakesareamusic.org
Capsule: After an intense and intimate concert by Callisto Quartet, violinist Chloe Fedor will be the next featured performer presented by the Lakes Area Music Festival’s winter series.
