Fry St. SQ March 1 at the 222

FRY ST. SQ PLAYS A DEMANDING 222 GALLERY CONCERT

Continuing a string of exemplary chamber music programs, Healdsburg’s 222 Gallery presented Utah-based Fry Street Quartet March 1 over two evenings that included a movie, two demanding quartets and a newly minted work by a local composer.

Newly minted? Gabriela Lena Frank’s A Psalm of Disquiet was commissioned and premiered by the Fry in November, and the composer was slated to be present for this performance before 70 attendees. The rainstorm and road closures in nearby Anderson Valley prevented the composer’s appearance, but the Fry forged ahead with an idiomatic and powerful reading of the 16-minute piece.

The music had similarities with the pungent movie background score of the previous event but had a more cogent architecture and instrumental contrasts – slashing bows; strong tremolos, languorous lines; sounds of grunts, whines, pops, snarls. The sharp contrasts often faded into lovely quiet sections with hints of themes, but the playing never rambled and was surely not stream-of-consciousness. Bradley Ottesen’s extended viola solo was a voice in the wild.

Opening the concert was a brisk 26-minute performance of Beethoven’s F Major Quartet, Op. 135, from 1826. Acoustics were immediately on display with heavy rain hitting the two high vaulted gallery roofs and heater fans adding a wispy sound, but happily the string sound was direct without much reverberation. Playing in the opening Allegretto had the requisite charm, and led wonderfully into vivace with rough repeated figures, and then the peaceful beauty of the Lento Assai with nimble decorations and a soft ending and the captivating long phrases. It was refined and elegant string playing.

In the rush of the finale the clarity of the contrapuntal lines was always evident, and it was played not too fast, never rushing off the tracks. Bar lines seemed to evaporate.

Cellist Ann Francis Bayless and Rebecca McFaul (violin) provided inciteful and convincing spoken introductions to the concert’s final work.

Shostakovich’s E-Flat Major Quartet (Op. 117) began with contrasts of whimsey and strident power. Mr. Ottesen’s viola playing was poignant throughout, as were solos from violinist Robert Waters, often in the highest register. Though not as popular as the eight quartet, the F Major from 1962 found with the Fry all the identifiable characteristics of the composers late middle period – stark and menacing harmonies, often ferocious tempos, off-beat rhythms in march sections, melancholy tunes and raucous pizzicato phrases (fourth movement) and, in the Fry’s reading of the finale, high spirits and instrumental speed.

There were no breaks between the five movements, and the applause at the conclusion was loud but not long in duration. There was no encore.