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The Pacifica String Quartet displays sure signs of greatness
in Mendelssohn, Ligeti and Beethoven.
Wednesday, January 9, 2002
By Wes Blomster

Denver owes much to its Friends of Chamber Music, a 50-year-old organization that began bringing distinguished artists and ensembles to the city back when local music-making was unworthy of mention. In December, the Emerson Quartet, a group with which the Friends enjoy an especially close association, played as part of the Friends' 2001-2002 series; with its members now in their magnificent maturity, the Emerson's four musicians left those who had heard them since they were kids asking who might occupy their exalted position a quarter-century from now.

The Pacifica, founded in Los Angeles in 1994, answers that question. Here is an ensemble with the markings of greatness. Its members, all still in their twenties, have put aside solo careers to build a quartet unique in character and quality. They play with amazing ease; there is not a hint of aggression in their work, and they never attempt to overwhelm the composer at hand. Richly individual voices combine to create a full-bodied and intensely focused sound.

With Mendelssohn's Op. 13, the Pacifica stressed the composer's debt to Beethoven. To the question "Ist es wahr?" (the phrase the 18-year-old Mendelssohn took for this score from Beethoven's song "Frage") the Pacifica sensed shadows of "Muss es sein?" (the question that Beethoven asks in the finale of his last quartet, Op. 135). While respecting the youthful vigor of the work, the Pacifica made marvelous sense of its sometimes fragmentary structure.

Fragmentation is the very essence of Ligeti's 1953 MÈtamorphoses nocturnes, written in an oppressive Hungary three years before the uprising that caused the composer to leave his native country. Ligeti described the work as "a kind of variation form, only there is no specific theme that is varied." A sequence of brief episodes within a single movement makes the score a challenge, and the Pacifica accepted the challenge with glee, relishing the way these segments sometimes melt into each other and at other times cut each other off. The group played the piece with the verve of musicians at a Hungarian hoedown.

With his dying breath, Goethe - Beethoven's contemporary and sometime friend - allegedly called for "more light." The Pacifica might have had this phrase in mind when it played Beethoven's Op. 132, the late quartet built around the profound "Holy Hymn of Thanksgiving to the Godhead by One Who Has Recovered" - the designation that the composer gave to the molto adagio at the center of the score. The players brought a luminous radiance to the work, which is often a victim of its own profundity in the hands of less assured musicians. There was nothing lugubrious in the Quartet's playing of the Lydian hymn; rather, the musicians stressed the transcendence that follows this documentation of pain, underscoring music's healing power.

Ethnic diversity contributes to the Pacifica's uniqueness: Ganatra is from Pakistan and Bernhardsson from Iceland; Rostad is the child of Norwegian and Japanese parents; only the Chicago-born Vamos is from the United States. The group is a delight to watch. Ganatra, an amazing violinist, does not impose leadership on her colleagues, but rather inspires them to join in the joy that she so obviously takes in her work.

The Pacifica is currently in residence at, and on the faculties of, both Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. Winners of Coleman, Concert Artists Guild and Naumburg awards, the Quartet has recorded Dvor·k's Viola Quintet with Michael Tree and three quartets by Chicago's Easley Blackwood.