A String Quartet Concert

I don't do a lot of concert reviews, partly because, apart from the Salzburg Festival, I don't attend a lot of concerts. But I saw one on Friday so this is an opportune time to check in on string quartet concerts as they are done nowadays. Some context: this concert was part of our local chamber series here in Mexico, though the audience is largely expatriates. The quartet were Americans from San Francisco and the program was one quartet each by Fanny Mendelssohn, Benjamin Britten and Beethoven.

First reactions: the Fanny Mendelssohn was a bit dull, but the Allegretto was dynamic and fun. The Britten was surprisingly good with lots of atmospheric textures and effects. And the Beethoven was Beethoven, that is, by far the best piece of the evening. I'm all for hearing unfamiliar works, by the way, and in the fullness of time we will discover what composers are really worth hearing often enough that they will find a place in the canon. In other words, audiences and performers will make these aesthetic decisions based on the aesthetic worth and audience enjoyment as they should and not on gender, race or any other collective membership.

What I really disliked was the first violinist and spokesperson for the group standing up before and rehearsing the standard narrative for us about how oppressed women composers were in past ages and how now we are enlightened and can congratulate ourselves on overcoming this bias. He didn't offer a similar narrative before the Britten based on how oppressed homosexuals were, etc, so thanks for that.

What I really enjoy about attending concerts in Europe is that never, out of dozens and dozens of concerts in various countries, have I ever had to listen to a speech before a concert retailing the social justice narrative. No, not once.

If I had attended the Sunday concert I would have been lectured on how oppressed black composers were as the opening composition was by George Walker. Those are the two oppressed groups we must always defer to, which means that, of course, everyone is being steadily reduced to their identity as a member of a collective. A very inappropriate approach for a field as dependent on individuality as composition. But there it is.