Challenging the Established Order
--With Varying Results
AUFBAU 62:25 Dec. 6, 1996 p16
Copyright by Leonard Lehrman & AUFBAU
Nov. 26, 1996 1766 words

CULTURE & THE ARTS

The "dull dreary month of November," to paraphrase Heine, proved anything but that in New York this year, as four polished, professional groups challenged the established order, offering performances with moments that thrilled and others that stood still.

The Guarneri Quartet [in
German Classics at Alice Tully]

Arnold Steinhardt, John Dalley, Michael Tree, and David Soyer have been playing Beethoven together for nearly a third of a century - [I know; I was the youngest student at their first Performance Seminar back in 1965 -] and it shows. The F major quartet, op. 135 gleamed, from the opening Allegretto to the jewel of a scherzo, the heavenly Lento, and the charming "Muss es sein? Es muss sein!" finale that the composer called a "schwer gefasste Entschluss" (a difficultly-arrived-at decision).

Texturally, the climax of the concert should have been the Brahms Sextet, op. 18, with Cynthia Phelps as second violist and Colin Carr as second cellist. Each of the additions proved just a bit distracting, visually, however, with Mr. Carr's vigorous head-nodding and Ms. Phelps' stunning white-and-gold gown clashing with the more laid-back men in black. And the tempi of both the first and last movements seemed to strain towards the "troppo" of the "Allegro ma non...", leaving little room for the "grazioso" melodiousness of the finale.

When working with students, each of the three fiddle players would play Violin II in quartets with three students because, as John Dalley put it semi-facetiously: "No one wants to play Second Violin! Yich!" In the opening Mendelssohn Quartet, op. 44 no. 1, Dalley played first, with Steinhardt as second. They have been doing this, they tell me, occasionally over the last four or five years. It is a nice egalitarian, even anti-establishment gesture. And Steinhardt is as good an ensemble player as he is a leader. Unfortunately, though, Dalley is a wonderful musician and solid craftsman, but his tone in the solo cadenza passages just doesn't shine the way Steinhardt's does.

A New Work at The Folksbiene
[original subhead: The Folksbiene Commissions A New (Feminist!) Work]

Twenty-six-year-old Rachel Botchan shines in the title role of The Maiden of Ludmir, a play in Yiddish by Miriam Hoffman that could have been written for her. In the Folksbiene's 81st season they have finally commissioned a new play for the first time, and wouldn't you know it would be on a feminist theme? Well, why not? If "mameloshn" was always spoken more by women, then shouldn't they know what's best? And wasn't Isaac Bashevis Singer's best play Yentl, the Yeshiva Bokher ?

The Maiden of Ludmir is actually very similar to Yentl : a young woman trying to be a sage in a man's world; except that this story is largely based on fact. Khane-Rukhele Verbermakher was a brilliant Talmudic scholar who led her own rabbinic court in early 19th century Ukraine, until she gave it up under pressure, married and assumed the more accepted role of wife and mother.

In the play, she wins over a melodramatic Heavenly Tribunal (created in an hysterically wonderful echo-effect by sound designer Marcello Mella) and forsees a day when women will become rabbis, judges and cantors. Bernard Mendelovitch as the Rebbe of Chernobyl is spell-binding in his concentration and charisma, Suzanne Toren is affecting as the girl's mother (movingly dedicating her performance to the memory of her father, the great editor of the Freie Arbeiter Stimme, Ahrne Thorne), while Folksbiene veterans Mina Bern and Zypora Spaisman flourish in the many opportunities the script gives them for shtick.

The music by John Clifton, written over the space of about ten days, contains a number of inspired moments, though just when you feel it may take off into a dance number it of