String quartets by a temporary immigrant and two native Americans, one man, two women. They are Antonin Dvorák, Ruth Crawford Seeger and Florence Price. The latter received attention only quite recently, as a female composer. And with that attention came Crawford into the spotlight as well. All three in search of American music. In search of a "national" music, as Dvorák had brought it into view for his Czech folk music. No gentlemen in black suits on the stage this time, but four colorfully dressed women: the Dutch Ragazze ("girls") Quartet.
Dvorák's "American" string quartet is one of his best-known results of his stay in that country. Throughout the entire quartet it seems beautifully sustained to me by the viola and the cello, they produce in any case the most beautiful sounds. In the second part the first violin comes more prominently into play. How could it be otherwise when you have to perform those sweeping melodic lines, but here again, lovingly supported by viola and cello. It becomes livelier and more playful in the Molto vivace and also more open. And that receives an even more American continuation. In the finale the string players indeed let some country music sound through. We see and hear almost real "fiddlers on the roof" at work.
Ruth Crawford Seeger's "String Quartet 1931" was announced as "modernistic". It sounded that way immediately with a dissonant opening. American music? Rather European avant-garde idiom, without doubt under the influence of her journey to that continent. At times lamenting long melodic lines, much question and answer play, smoothly interlocking with each other and with surprisingly much work for the first violin, constantly changing in tempo, almost overlapping. Certainly also influenced by the theories of her later husband Charles Seeger on "dissonant counterpoint". She passed on her love for folk music, moreover, with success to her better-known son Pete Seeger, who wrote numerous folksongs and protest songs in the sixties of the last century. The Ragazze Quartet was proud to be able to play this work, which was quite unknown to them, for the first time at the Leuven Festival 20·21 They could not have filled the objectives of that Festival more appropriately.
With the rediscovery of Florence Price's work we are back in the American sound world. More than that, the opening of her Second String Quartet sounds almost classically Dvorákian, with clear quotations from or variations on his "New World". But with her that distinctly open American musical idiom comes through quite quickly and in the third part it becomes truly American with even jazzy bluenotes and swing elements including rhythm-and-blues sounds. discoveries from recent times. And that is precisely the strength of this Leuven Festival 20·21, "beyond the limits of pleasure".