David Harrington’s Listening Party

Image: David Harrington

Full disclosure: I am a HUGE Kronos Quartet fan.  The first time I experienced their brilliance was at Adelaide Town Hall during the 1990 Adelaide Festival.  They played four works from John Zorn, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Peter Sculthorpe, finishing with the unbelievable Different Trains by Steve Reich.  That performance, I still maintain, is among my top five theatrical experiences of all time.  Every element was captivating: the superb talent on stage, the compositions, gorgeous cued lighting (the likes of which I had never seen during a string concert), and the generally heightened, anticipatory atmosphere.  I was in the front row and not only heard the music but felt every vibration in my bones.  I still have the recording of Different Trains and it still makes me weep, from both the beauty of the piece and the stories that inspired it.

Some thirty five years later I delightedly attended David Harrington’s (founding violin, Kronos Quartet) Listening Party as part of the Adelaide Festival Daylight Express series presented with his guest and friend Garth Knox, another extraordinary musician and composer.  Harrington is this year curating the Festival’s Horizons: Chamber Landscapes concerts at the purpose-built Ukaria Cultural Centre in the Adelaide Hills but the Listening Party was a one-off event

Both musicians possess that spell and presence, or star quality, and radiated kindness, generosity, and intelligence as they spoke.  We heard entertaining tales about music and other influences that have shaped both career and craft.  A wonderful sentiment to ponder came from Knox (viola and viola d’amore with the Arditti String Quartet and Pierre Boulez plus much more) about the heart of music being sound rather than notes.  The exact same note may be rendered on piano, saxophone, strings, and more, but the sound that this note produces differs - so sound is therefore truly where meaning and emotion emanate from in music. 

Both Knox and Harrington spoke of the later Beethoven Quartets being rather important in their early years, Harrington was only twelve or thirteen, a member of the Seattle Youth Symphony and fascinated with these works.  Another formative musical moment for Harrington was hearing George Crumb’s Black Angels (subtitled "Thirteen Images from the Dark Land") and being moved by its association with the Vietnam War.  Written in 1970 as an ode or lament for the progress of that war it was the inspiration for the formation of Kronos Quartet (1973), such was the difficulty of the work that Harrington realised a full-time commitment was needed.

Image: Garth Knox

Garth Knox talked about the sense of a composer’s role being that of messenger as much as creator.  Some composers describe their music as already ‘in existence’ and that they merely transcribe to “pass on the message”.  Harrington mentioned that composer Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997) definitely articulated this idea.  To me it seems akin to sculptors like Michelangelo stating they are responsible for ‘releasing’ the image from the stone, rather than shaping the stone to fit an image.

Kronos Quartet, and Harrington himself as founder and longest serving member, are undoubtedly pioneers and game changers musically speaking.  They have commissioned more than a thousand works for string quartet, established numerous educational projects and toured extensively.  Harrington: “I've always wanted the string quartet to be vital, and energetic, and alive, and cool, and not afraid to kick ass and be absolutely beautiful and ugly if it has to be. But it has to be expressive of life. To tell the story with grace and humour and depth. And to tell the whole story, if possible.” 

One ‘enabling’ initiative is Fifty for the Future (begun in 2016) where female and male composers (twenty five of each) were commissioned to submit works - ten per year for five years.  The project is a terrific resource for emerging string artists and features downloadable scores and parts along with a variety of useful materials to aid study, including videos of Kronos performing each work.

More fabulous tales of pivotal music moments for both artists unfolded, including Steve Reich’s Different Trains, John Zorn’s Forbidden Fruit and Cat O'Nine Tails.  With Different Trains, the group realised they would need to “become a quintet”, such was the importance of a sound engineer for that, and many future projects with electronic and recorded parts.  Another delightful addition to the presentation was Knox demonstrating the complexity and beauty of the viola d’amore, an instrument from the seventeenth century related to the viola da gamba. 

This lunchtime ‘party’ was a delightful addition to the Festival program and I feel privileged to have been present.

Lisa Lanzi

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