From Albuquerque Journal

January 12, 2003 by Joanne Sheehy

Chamber Music Albuquerque started off the new year Friday night with an electric concert in the Simms Performing Arts Center that signaled its continuing mission to make chamber music a vital part of the area's musical life. The five musicians, the Shanghai Quartet plus pianist Rieko Aizawa, played with a passionate intelligence that brought the audience to its feet after every work.

Aizawa opened the concert with Ravel's Sonatina for Piano in F-Sharp Minor. Born in Japan in 1974, she came to the United States in 1988, studying at the Curtis Institute, then going on for a master's degree from Juilliard. In her hands, the Ravel unfolded like a sustained poem. With a wide palette of tonal colors and exquisite dynamic control, she played as if painting with sound, seeming to respond spontaneously to Ravel's suggestions rather than giving a fixed interpretation. Very free rhythmically and yet held together by a deep connection to the composer's intent, she turned the ebb and flow of his thought into a timeless rush, like water streaming toward the sea.

The Shanghai Quartet then plunged with unwavering intensity into the dense world of Beethoven's Opus 95 String Quartet. Compressed almost to the point of implosion, this work stands as a stark waystation between the accessibility of the preceding quartets and the transcendent explorations of the late quartets.

Formed at the Shanghai Conservatory in 1983, the Shanghai Quartet is active here and in China, with residencies and performances in both places.

The four have a taut ensemble, both technically and emotionally, which served them well in this Beethoven. With fierce concentration they dived into the expressive heart of the work, turning the first movement into a brushfire that swept through the hall so sudden and so intense it left one gasping for breath. The second became a desolate plain, its poignant lines turned into cries of anguish. The third movement passed in an impetuous rush, barely checked by momentary lyricism, and the fourth weighed heavily upon the heart, the mad dash of its close feeling like release from a terrible spell.

Aizawa and the Shanghai ended the evening with a splendidly paced reading of Franck's feverish Piano Quintet in F Minor. Conveying the music's agitated spirit yet avoiding the overwrought, they gave its emotional ebb and flow plenty of room without losing the forward drive. It was a big emotional journey with many moments of beauty including the quiet weeping of the second movement and the spirited lightness of the third.

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