Washington Classical Review

J’Nai Bridges performed Elgar’s Sea Pictures with pianist Terrence Wilson and the Catalyst Quartet Wednesday night at the Library of Congress. Photo: C. Downey

The Catalyst Quartet made its debut performance at the Library of Congress Wednesday evening. The compact program, ninety minutes with intermission, offered an enticing theme: the cross-hybridization of European classical music and African-American folk song. The list of composers ranged from Dvořák and Elgar farther afield to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Libby Larsen.

While the choice of music proved exceptionally worthwhile, the execution revealed many of the same shortcomings heard at the Catalyst Quartet’s 2024 concert at the Kennedy Center. Intonation problems abounded, especially involving cellist Karlos Rodriguez, whose burgeoning tone sometimes overwhelmed his colleagues, primarily the tentative sound of violist Paul Laraia. Ensemble cohesion also suffered, as the musicians sometimes veered off on their own.

The quartet opened with Coleridge-Taylor’s Fantasiestücke, five movements for string quartet premiered in 1895. This was a decade before the British composer’s American tours, when he came into contact with African-American music for the first time. At that point, Coleridge-Taylor became more interested in his father’s roots in Sierra Leone, as a descendant of freed slaves from the Americas. This score, by contrast, sounded more European than not.

Ties to the music of Dvořák and Elgar, however, gave the piece considerable interest in terms of the programming concept. The musicians enlivened the third movement (“Humoresque”) with folk-like adjustments of tempo, creating a sense of spontaneous freedom. The fifth movement (“Dance”), anchored on cello drone sounds like the first movement, also sounded like a tribute to Dvořák, although first violinist Karla Donehew Perez had some exposed intonation clashes as well.

Abi Fayette’s moving to first violin seemed to stabilize the quartet’s sound in Libby Larsen’s Sorrow Song and Jubilee, premiered in 2014. The American composer was inspired by the “creative partnership,” as she put it, of Dvořák and African-American composer Henry Thacker Burleigh, then a student at the National Conservatory of Music in New York, where Dvořák served as director. Burleigh often sang traditional spirituals for Dvořák, who alluded to them in his music more than really quoting them.

This short piece incorporated elements of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and Dvořák’s Largo theme (later given the words “Goin’ Home”), both heard in the “New World” Symphony. The two sections, slow and fast in tempo, came across vividly in this performance. Fayette’s more demure tone seemed to produce greater cohesion among the musicians, with some blues-inflected smears adding a vernacular familiarity.

Mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges, fresh off a star turn in WNO”s The Crucible last month, and pianist Terrence Wilson joined for two piano quintet arrangements of vocal works on the second half.  The connection of Elgar’s Sea Pictures to the program was less musical than mentorial, as the elder English composer’s recommendation helped get Coleridge-Taylor an early commission.

Bridges’ voice suited this idyllic song cycle almost ideally, with a bronzed chest voice reaching down to powerful low notes in the male range. Her broad range allowed her to take all the high notes, up to an incisive top A, deployed at major climaxes. Kim Diehnelt’s arrangement of the orchestral score for piano and string quartet, now a decade old, provided an elegant approximation of the original. The instrumentalists, including pianist Wilson, should have paid closer attention to not drowning out Bridges, especially in her middle range.

A couple decades after the “New World” Symphony, one of Dvořák’s students, William Arms Fisher, adapted the English horn solo from the Largo as a spiritual, using a text of his own devising titled “Goin’ Home.” Noah Luna arranged that adaptation for piano and string quartet, a version that took considerable liberties. Bridges sang the unaccompanied sections with reserved nobility, and the instrumentalists supported her with calm, measured chords.

The Raven Chacon Ensemble performs chamber and conceptual compositions by Raven Chacon, including the world premiere of a new work commissioned by the Library of Congress, 8 p.m. April 11. loc.gov