By Austin Henderson
The Ariel Quartet performed at the Voxman Music Building on Wednesday evening. The Israel-based group has received widespread acclaim for their enthusiastic renditions of classical standards since they formed 16 years ago.
The group consists of violinists Alexandra Kazovsky, Jan Gruning, and Gershon Gerchikov, with cellist Amit Even-Tov rounding out the group’s sound. Kazovsky said their roots in Israel’s budding classical-music scene in an interview earlier this week.
“[Gerchikov, Even-Tov, and I] began playing together when we were 14 years old,” she said. “We had no intentions of starting a group, but we were playing in the same conservatory, and the music really captured us. We met [Gruning] six years ago and meshed because of his same form of performance.”
The group has sparked widespread acclaim for its style, called youthful in many circles, on account of its wild ferocity. One notable characteristic of the group’s music is the ability to bring a fresh perspective to frequently performed pieces.
“Ariel spanned three centuries with a program of works by Mozart, Janacek, and Brahms, but never sounded like archivists,” wrote the critic Chris Waddington in the *New Orleans Times-Picayune*. “With each piece, they stretched the musical fabric, seeking opportunities to unleash dance rhythms, vaulting dynamic shift, and dramatic stops and starts. And they wrapped everything in a big burnished string sound of near-orchestral richness.”
Adding another dimension to the already explosive, soulful nature of the group is frequent collaborator, pianist Orion Weiss. A veteran of such acclaimed orchestras as the Chicago Symphony and New York Philharmonic, the Classical Recording Foundation’s 2013 “Young Artist of the Year” has received widespread praise. The *Washington Post* even went so far as to compare his style to the breathtaking awe of his namesake: “When you’re named after one of the biggest constellations in the night sky, the pressure is on to display a little star power — and the young pianist Orion Weiss did exactly that …”
Their performance combined classical symphonies and contemporary pieces, all performed in their signature breakneck style. Continuing their headway in the interpretation of Beethoven, the group performed his composition “Quartet in A Major, Op. 18, No. 5.” The second act consisted of Jorg Widmann’s “Quartet No. 3, (Hunting).” Following a brief intermission, the group attacked Ernö Dohnányi’s “Piano Quintet No. 2 in E-flat Minor, Op. 26.”
Kazovsky noted on the diversity of their program.
“We are lucky. Nearly every composer has written music for the string quartet, so we are never limited in what to choose from,” she said. “We are aiming to have a performance full of contrasts, the first piece by Beethoven is very joyful. The second, by Widmann, is almost a horror piece. Called ‘Hunting,’ it almost has a horror movie or thriller feel to it. It is very challenging to play, stretching the bounds of what we do as instrumentalists. Dohnányi’s piece is very romantic, oscillating between minor and major feels.”
Ariel Quartet When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Voxman Concert Hall
Cost: Free