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Miro Quartet's Quartet of Quartets New York
Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall
10/23/2026 -
Franz Schubert: ”Quartettsatz” in C Minor, D.703; String Quartet in G Major, D.887; Caroline Shaw: Entr’acte; Anton von Webern: Langsamer Satz (”Slow Movement”)
Miró Quartet: Daniel Ching, William Fedkenheuer (Violins) John Largess (Viola), Joshua Gindele (Cello)
”I guess I'd like people to be able to forget a lot of things and just enjoy the beauty of harmony and melody for a moment.”
Caroline Shaw
”Easy mind, light heart. A mind that is too easy hides a heart that is too heavy.”
Franz Schubert
Miró String Quartet(©Jeff Wilson)
Our October musical surprise? Two pieces by Anton von Webern in the space of one week.
True, one could say that the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Im Sommerwind and last night’s Miró Quartet’s Langsamer Satz were not real Webern They were too cogent, too dramatic, too…er…tonal.
On the other hand, both performances were–without a scintilla of a doubt–literal paintings. Orchestrally, the first was based on the usual German Romantic poem to nature (with endless metaphors), the quartet was literal nature. A hike through the Austrian forests, falling in love, and later marriage, with his cousin.
Even more than the opening Schubert, the 30-year-old Miró Quartet showed how their virtuosity could blossom into bloom. Yes, like Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night, both had extreme passions, both were on the cusp of throwing away tonality, Schoenberg was tragedy, and Webern was a celebration of life.
Not a celebration of intervals!
And Miró ,with their original seating of First Violin-Cello and Viola-Second Violin, had the color of love on a forest path.
A.vonWebern/C.Shaw(©Public Domain/Kyle Dorosz)
The following Caroline Shaw Entra’cte is not typical of Carolyn Shaw. Only because nothing is typical of Ms. Shaw. Her natural amazing talents as singer, fiddler, pianist and composer are rivaled only by her heritage: North Carolina, folk, rock, Yale University pedagogical training.
And in Entra’cte, she whizzed through her Haydn. Rather, she took a minuet from Haydn and….well, she didn’t transcribe it or rewrite it or did variations on it. Rather, she took the opening triplets, broadened them out, changed rhythms and harmonies and still, thanks to the wonders of Miró , allowed a contrapuntal clarity for each and every note.
My only regret was not hearing her music for the recent Death of a Salesman. Maybe on YouTube?
The concert was bookended by two opposing works by Schubert: his shortest and longest.
Actually the opening Quartettsatz. was set to be a full-fledged string quartet, but Schubert abandoned it. Musicologists would say he wrote a few measures of a second movement (true), forgot about it after other inspirations. Romantics opine that–like his ”Unfinished” Symphony– he couldn’t find anything equal to its power.
Whatever the answer, the Miró Quartet started the evening with all the excitement and tension necessary for a searing start.
Yet question about Franz Schubert’s final String Quartet, making the second half of the program, is how this deep, enigmatic composer, as prolific as a hamster, could write this ceaselessly inspired work. After all, he was dying of syphilis, he knew the piece would never be performed in his presence.
Yet the G Major Quartet never shows its age or the mood of the composer. The piece buzzes with melodies, it swings with meters and (especially in the first movement) changes from a grainy minor key to the sweetest major key. This is echt-Schubert!!
Obviously it’s a durational challenge for any ensemble, and the Miró went through its paces as though it was child’s play.
On the other hand, one wished for more quirkiness, a bit more eccentricity. One could only respect the measured tempos of the first movement, yet one regretted that the perfection sometimes eschewed Schubert’s expressive breadth.
The following movement, certainly the only tragic, was played with stunning legato. Yet one wanted more jabs, more of the cryptic upward minor-third.
(I obsessively thought this motif, when repeated, was like Beethoven’s final quartet epigraph ”Muss es sein?”–”Must it be?”)
The Miró Quartet was hardly averse to offering the last two movements with utter joy and absolute pathos (see the Schubert quote above). The usual words are that–due to its length and symphonic depth, this is his “greatest.” The adjective means nothing. This is beautiful Schubert, and the Miró, avoiding the hints of tragedy, played it with unfailing virtuosity.
Harry Rolnick
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