With lively eyes and lightning-fast fingers, the Hofstra String Quartet took to the stage of the Helene Fortunoff Theater on Sunday night with a performance that enthralled every member of the audience with the loveliest of sounds. The quartet brought to life Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Major, highlighting the many incredible elements of classical music that too often go overlooked.
Comprised of violinists Alexander Sharpe and Matthew Lehmann, violist Todd Low and cellist Benjamin Wolff, the Hofstra String Quartet demonstrated in their one hour-long performance the complexity of Beethoven’s compositions and the musical themes entangled within the lines of the pieces’ staves.
Prior to beginning the piece for the night, Wolff took a moment to illustrate the ability of Beethoven’s music to transform simple musical ideas into intricate phrases of elaborate fingerings and bowings that are all capable of encompassing a common theme. Comparing classical music to painters of the 20th century, Wolff emphasized the abstract ability of music to produce a story through notes on a page, not unlike an artist paints his story with color.
The cellist alluded to NASA’s creation of the Golden Record, a collection of earthly sounds and music that would be sent out into interstellar space as a documentation of humanity. Wolff explained the awe he felt for the selection of the record’s final two musical tracks: Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night” and Beethoven’s “Opus 130,” which was the one and only piece the Quartet played that evening. Wolff believed that Beethoven’s deafness served as a separation of himself from others – the audience, musicians and other composers – and allowed him to live within himself, answering to no one and nothing but his own thoughts and imagination.
As the piece reached its end, these four respected members of the music department capped off the evening with the score’s powerful conclusion, filling the theater with the heavenly notes that reverberated out from their instruments. The piece’s finale was the perfect punctuation mark to Wolff’s description of music as a layering of moods and emotions as told by the great Ludwig van Beethoven.
The Hofstra String Quartet captured a magnificence specific to the intimacy of chamber music within the walls of the Helene Fortunoff Theater. Every synchronized breath and movement the men portrayed allowed Beethoven’s musical storytelling to consume the audience and permitted every listener a glance at just how powerful the sense of sound can truly be.