White Water (String Quartet No. 5) (2011)

At Carmel's Sunset Center last night, Chamber Music Monterey Bay and the Daedalus Quartet unleashed a world premiere performance of Joan Tower's string quartet, White Water. I use the word "unleashed," because what we heard was a bold dramatic work full of suppressed violence straining to burst its bounds. This work alternates between many emotions, some of which are enigmatic, dazzling, disturbing, serene, and virtuosic to the extreme, but also totally absorbing. White Water grabs you by the throat and commands your attention for approximately twenty minutes, and seemingly only a brief twenty minutes at that.

The first impression given by this work is how beautifully effective it sounds. To what degree this was determined by Tower's skill in writing for string instruments or the fabulous playing of the members of the Daedalus Quartet, was difficult to say. The work itself and the performers seemed to be totally together as one.

The work began with a lovely viola solo by Jessica Thompson consisting of a scale-like melody, echoed by the other instruments that always seemed to be thrusting upwards, sometimes diatonically, sometimes chromatically and sometimes as eerie glissandos. Also quite memorable was a lovely cello solo by Thomas Kraines and the rich pure sound of violinist Min-Young Kim. The cumulative effect of the white-hot energy generated by this work drew a warm response from the audience both for the performance and for the appearance on stage of composer Joan Tower.