Federico Capitoni · Amadeus, 2012
A composer hearing a work premiered may worry less about the performance itself than about comparison with the pieces preceding or following it. Milan-born composer Jacopo Baboni Schilingi, born in 1971, had his Santa Cecilia commission wedged between two masterpieces, very different yet paradigmatic of string-quartet writing.
Ravel’s Quartet of 1902 shows him to be a composer “of the limit”. Like Ives or Scriabin, he pushes a boundary as far as possible, one only the avant-garde would leave behind. The first movement alone shows him stopping just short of the rupture: the point Schoenberg would decide to start from. [A short passage at the foot of the first column is missing or illegible in the archived clipping.] There are ruptures even Debussy’s audacity had not touched: melodic fragmentation, suspension, the idea of indefinitely awaiting harmonic resolution. All this finally rests on consoling Brahmsian solutions: extraordinary.
The other jaw of the vice gripping Schilingi is equally exceptional. It is surprising that Steve Reich’s Different Trains for quartet and tape, written in 1988, is already a classic. The Leonis Quartet performs it standing, inducing hypnosis from which one cannot awaken until the abrupt interruption—there is no finale; the piece ends suddenly like a psychologist’s handclap.
How does Schilingi emerge? Rather well. His composition is sufficiently robust and resilient, but in the short term, that of the concert: it will not become a classic. De la nature du sacre is written for string quartet and live computer, making it almost a quintet. The composer’s intervention is strong, indeed guides the score. Although his task is to rework the strings’ sounds and return them transformed, the electronics in fact display considerable autonomy, their connection with instrumental writing almost always elusive. Yet the result is highly effective.
The highest praise goes to the Leonis Quartet, playing with exceptional control, deserving the audience’s enthusiastic applause and presenting itself as a plausible heir to the Kronos Quartet.
Baboni Schilingi, De la nature du sacre. Rome, Accademia di Santa Cecilia. The Leonis Quartet at Santa Cecilia.