The Kronos Quartet was at Zankel Corridor on Friday with a usually eclectic program that included new works drawing on jazz, psychedelic rock and Nordic folks music. The colourful efficiency was not solely the ensemble’s return to an area it reliably fills with devoted followers; with the quartet’s ranks refreshed by three sensible new gamers, it additionally felt like a comeback.
Lately, the growing older ensemble — based in 1973 by David Harrington, who continues to guide it as first violin — generally appeared to have had slid into an identification disaster. The Kronos model was nonetheless robust: Bold commissions stored pushing the boundaries of quartet music, leading to greater than 1,000 new works and preparations drawing on each possible type. Within the run-up to its golden jubilee, the ensemble initiated a commissioning venture, 50 for the Future, and made the sheet music to all 50 items accessible free on-line.
However the high quality of the taking part in had grow to be inconsistent. And the spoken introductions the gamers provided at concert events felt perfunctory and drained. When the violinist John Sherba and the violist Hank Dutt, who had been within the lineup since 1978, retired final 12 months, the quartet may need disbanded. As a substitute, Harrington introduced in contemporary expertise and — judging by the music-making on Friday — robust personalities. The quartet’s center voices now belong to the violinist Gabriela Díaz and the violist Ayane Kozasa, who be a part of the composer and cellist Paul Wiancko, who got here onboard in 2022.
In the course of the kaleidoscopic first half of the live performance the 2 girls asserted themselves because the quartet’s engines of emotional depth and a newly lustrous, wealthy sound. This got here via most powerfully in Aleksandra Vrebalov’s incantatory “Gold Got here From Area,” which regularly grows in sonic density and expressive intent from tremulous whispers. Again and again, Kozasa’s viola stole the highlight with its absorbing combination of lyricism and throaty candor. She channeled Nina Simone’s tough-nosed tenderness in Jacob Garchik’s association of “For All We Know” (composed by J. Fred Coots) and set the tone for Wiancko’s association of Neil Younger’s protest tune “Ohio.”
Two songs by Solar Ra, “Outer Spaceways Integrated” (wittily organized by Garchik) and “Kiss Yo’ Ass Goodbye,” in a psychedelic association by Terry Riley and Sara Miyamoto, sparkled with experimental glee. That exploratory zest had all the time been an indicator of Kronos. However the heart-on-sleeve directness the group dropped at Viet Cuong’s stirring “Subsequent Week’s Bushes,” during which the quartet generally seems like a large harp, felt new.
The second half was taken up by a single work, “Elja,” by Benedicte Maurseth and Kristine Tjogersen. Maurseth, who joined the Kronos gamers for the efficiency, is a grasp on the Norwegian hardanger fiddle, a violin-like instrument with 4 additional resonating strings and a curved neck and carved scroll that evokes the bow of an historical ship. For the 45-minute piece, which additionally featured recorded nature sounds, the Kronos gamers switched to hardanger variations of their very own devices. (The viola and cello fiddles had been specifically constructed for Kronos by the Norwegian luthier Ottar Kasa.)
Forty-five minutes felt too lengthy for this prolonged examine in stillness with breathy harmonics animated by rippling arpeggios evoking a wind harp arrange in a desolate panorama. However the collective sound the Kronos produced, even with these unfamiliar devices, was cogent and unified.
For a half century, Kronos has shaken up expectations. With the present lineup, it has the potential to go in new instructions, together with — maybe shocking in a bunch that lengthy cultivated a sure model of cool — the flexibility to dig for a deeper emotional connection to sound.
Kronos Quartet
Carried out Friday at Zankel Corridor
