From The Greenville News

Friday January 14, 2000 by Ann Hicks

The sheer beauty of the Shanghai Quartet's performance Thursday night at the Peace Center's Gunter Theatre gave the audience a thrill.

Violinists Weigang Li and Yiwen Jiang, violist Honggang Li and cellist James Wilson drew their elegant music from some of the greatest Western quartet literature - across the 18th century and into the 20th.

This was the second Greenville appearance of these highly talented young musicians, who glided with obvious mastery from Hayden to Shostakovich to Dvorak with equal ease.

In all three pieces their entrances were crisp, distinct, and precise - the beauty of each composition made memorable by their talented performance.

They opened with Hayden's Quartet in C Major Op. 74, marked by childlike cheerfulness, a lighthearted piece of music clearly written for entertainment. One would imagine that it was as well received by its audience in the late 1700's as it was Thursday night. The third movement minuet with its quick-changing dynamics was positivly foot-tapping stuff. The Shanghai had fun with it.

An indescribable chasm exists between the lives of the happy composer Hayden and the tragically mistreated Dimitri Shostakovich, whose Quartet No. 6 in G Major Op. 101 took us into the 20th century.

Shostakovich, composing during the savage days of Stalin's iron rule, nevertheless demonstrated that genius prevailes against all odds. During that time if ideological oppression and systematic persecution of artists, he composed ceaslessly.

Op, 101, written in 1956, three years after Stalin died, is one of his lighter compositions.

Violist Honggang Li began the first movement, Allegretto, engergetically calling on Wilson's cello. Soon, they were joined by deuling violinists, Yiwen Jiang and Weigang Li.

In this piece there is a lovely chaconne that soars with optimism and light, as if the composer took a deep breath and could see the clouds part, if only briefly.

In the third movement - Lento; Allegretto - he slipped back into a brooding finale, played by the Shanghai with just the right measure of lyricism.

After intermission, unexpected levity arose when, into the first few bars of Dvorak's Quartet in A-flat Major, Op. 105, Wilson's cello string broke with a loud thud.

He dashed for the side entrance off stage. In the ensuing quiet moments, Honggang Li broke into a warm smile and, turing to the audience, gave us a brief synopsis of what preceeded the composition of Op. 105.

Dvorak was deperately homesick - so homesick that he did not finish this piece until he was safely back in his Czech homeland among the people he loved. Although he wrote the first two movements of this brilliantly textured piece in the United States, it is the last two movements that are truly the joy of this composition for musician and audience alike - glowing with Dvoraks happy disposition.

Come back, Shanghai - give us a reprise next year.

Back to Reviews