By Gigi Yellen-Kohn, JTNews Correspondent
A unique concert series called The American String Project presents its second season in Seattle this month. Fifteen world-class string players will gather at Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya, to transform familiar chamber music into the fuller sound of a string orchestra. It’s a very short season: only three concerts, on the evenings of March 12, 14, and 15.
The American String Project’s orchestra exists only for these three concerts, at this one moment in the year. Spearheaded by double-bassist Barry Lieberman of the University of Washington’s music department, TASP mostly plays arrangements by Lieberman himself, who long nurtured this dream of creating more opportunities for his instrument. Too big a sound for the delicate blends of the traditional string quartet — two violins, one viola and a cello — Lieberman’s double-bass can happily join in a richer mix of multiple strings. TASP won praise from critics and audiences alike for its debut performances in 2002.
One of America’s most prolific and respected music journalists, Michael Steinberg, will make a rare Seattle appearance this month as The American String Project’s pre-concert lecturer. The three concerts — March 12, 14, and 15 at Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya — by 15 world-class string players, present familiar chamber music transformed into the fuller sound of a string orchestra.
Preparing for pre-concert lectures can be a nightmare if the lecturer is unfamiliar with the music, but to talk about Schöenberg’s Transfigured Night, on the Saturday, March 15 concert, “you could wake me at four in the morning, and I could launch into a half-hour lecture,” Steinberg confesses.
One of the towering figures of 20th century European music, Schöenberg converted from Judaism to Christianity, like many career climbers of his Viennese generation.
Steinberg points out one of the ironies of that move:
“Anybody else who wanted to convert just for professional advancement would have become a Catholic,” he says, “but not Schöenberg. He had to become a Lutheran, joining yet another persecuted minority!”
When Hitler came to power, Schöenberg fled to Paris and soon recommitted himself to Judaism. According to Steinberg, Marc Chagall was one of the witnesses for that ceremony.
Schöenberg’s Jewish-themed work includes an opera (Moses and Aaron); a work for narrator and chorus based on the famous ghetto uprising, A Survivor from Warsaw; a Kol Nidre; and a group of what he called “modern psalms.” On the American String Project’s March 15 concert, however, the Schöenberg work — not a new arrangement, but the composer’s own — will be Transfigured Night, a haunting instrumental tone poem.
Steinberg hints he may include in his preconcert lecture a reading of the passionate poem that inspired this ethereal music. With his velvety voice and elegant diction, that should be quite a treat.
Steinberg, born in 1928 in Breslau, Germany, was 10 years old when his mother saved his life by sending him off on a kindertransport. A “very idealistic, nicely leftwing” English family, he says, took him in and sent him to boarding school for both secular and Jewish education. Amazingly, the Steinbergs were reunited and settled in the United States. Since his days as a college choir singer at Princeton, Steinberg has built a legendary career as critic, music educator, and performer. His persistently negative reviews of the 1960s-era Boston Symphony led to the orchestra’s attempt to forbid him from attending its concerts. Not long after, the BSO not only forgave him, but hired him to write its program notes. He’s written for and advised the San Francisco Symphony, lectured widely, and contributed to the major dictionaries and encyclopedias of music. Steinberg is the author of The Symphony: A Listener’s Guide (1995) and The Concerto: A Listener’s Guide (1998), both from Oxford Press.
The American String Project includes talents from the Lark Quartet, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and New European Strings; a Juillard professor; faculty from UBC, WWU, and the University of Connecticut; a Philadelphia Orchestra member, the Spokane Symphony concertmaster, and a Tchaikovsky competition winner.
To perform with his double-bass, Barry Lieberman has brought together an accomplished group of violinists, violists, and cellists, including Steinberg’s wife, Minnesota Orchestra concertmaster Jorja Fleezanis, and his own wife, Maria Larionoff, associate concertmaster of the Seattle Symphony.
The American String Project concerts have no conductor. The violinists take turns as concertmaster, leading from the first chair, a common practice in small-ensemble performance.
Lieberman’s expanded arrangements fill the program Wednesday night, March 12, with music by Cherubini, Mendelssohn and Prokofiev. On Friday, March 14, in addition to Lieberman’s version of string quartets by Mozart and Beethoven, the group will perform Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings in its original form. On Saturday, March 15, a Haydn quartet adapted by Lieberman shares the program with Grieg’s original Holberg Suite and Schöenberg’s Transfigured Night.
Tickets for The American String Project concerts are available from their Web site, www.theamericanstringproject.org, or by calling 206-789-4646. Michael Steinberg will lecture before each concert.