St. Lawrence String Quartet mixed old, new

Grinnell students and community members got a taste of the old mixed with a modern flare last night during a performance by the St. Lawrence String Quartet in Herrick Chapel. The quartet was brought to campus by the Grinnell College Public Events Committee, and consists of cellist Christopher Costanza, violist Lesley Robertson, and violinists Geoff Nuttall and Scott St. John.

The first half of the performance showcased two classical pieces: String Quartet in F major, Op. 7, No. 2, by Franz Josef Haydn, and String Quartet in F minor, Op. 80, by Felix Mendelssohn. The Gothic design of Herrick Chapel with its vaulted ceilings and stained glass windows complemented the music’s origins in an earlier time.

But the energetic performance of the musicians brought a touch of the rock concert experience to the event. After some in the audience clapped between movements in the first piece, one of the members of the Quartet encouraged the crowd to cheer whenever the felt the urge, noting that Haydn was “like a rock star” during his time and lamented the fact that the style of music is now most often thought of only as the background to cocktail parties.

If there was any sense of sense of “cocktail party music,” it was quickly wiped away after the intermission when the quartet returned to perform a piece written specifically for them by modern composer John Adams. The more experimental piece had two movements and followed the composer’s minimalist tendencies, although it also contained a number of shifts vibrantly preformed by the quartet.

Since the event was open to the public, the crowd was evenly mixed between members of the Grinnell community and musically inclined students. The students in the crowd seemed to particularly enjoy the modern compositions in the second act of the show.

“I’m a huge John Adams fan, so when I saw that they were playing a piece that Adams commissioned for them … I got pretty excited. It was great to see live,” said Johnny Buse ’11 after the show. “The energy that I felt, especially in the second movement of that Adams’ piece, surpassed what I can get on my headphones at a computer.”

— Pat Caldwell ’09