Fellows Quartet on the road with Bela and Josef

From a community center, to a chapel, to a barn, the Fellows String Quartet traveled through the streets of Providence and over hill and dale to perform the music of Bartok and Haydn last month. 
   
The tour began on February 2 with an interactive performance at the John Hope Settlement House in Providence. With their insightful prefatory remarks, Ealain and Ariana introduced the audience to the melodic beauty as well as the humor and playfulness of Haydn’s Quartet in G Minor and to the folk melodies set within a complex emotional tapestry in Bartok’s Quartet No. 2. The Quartet played excerpts of each work to demonstrate how the four instrumental voices use such techniques as plucking and muting to create interesting sound effects and how the voices meld and diverge to form rich harmonies, colors and textures.

On February 4, our troupe traveled to the United Methodist Church in Hope, RI. The unusual design of the chapel bathed our quartet with the intense light of the afternoon sun and with even brighter acoustics. The lively sound stage inspired us to turn our chairs inward to face one another, with the audience surrounding us and enveloping us with their presence. As a quartet, this arrangement allowed us to focus inward and to use visual clues to override the auditory tricks created by the bouncing sound.  This “performance in the round” allowed us to communicate equally within our foursome, and it created a more intimate atmosphere for both the musicians and the listeners.

2012-02-04 Haydn Quartet in G Minor Op. 20 No. 3 I. Allegro

In contrast, our February 5 concert was held in a venue where the acoustics were dry and our sound more focused. The Performing Arts Center at Roger Williams University in Bristol is housed in a beautifully renovated dairy barn, host to theatrical and dance productions as well as musical offerings. We performed on their black box stage, where the theatrical lighting made for a more “naked” performance experience. We shared the bill with Adrienne and pianist Aaron Jackson who performed the Prokofiev Cello Sonata in C Major.   

   
All three audiences received us with enthusiasm and curiosity. The reactions from our fans after listening to the Bartok ranged from “I think I felt just about every emotion you can feel during the performance” to “. . . the Haydn was beautiful, but the Bartok was a reach for me.” 
   

All in all, it was a fun weekend of new venues and diverse audiences that both stretched us as musicians and brought us closer as a Quartet. 

-EmmaLee Holmes-Hicks, Fellow