ARTS JOURNAL: More joy
ARTS JOURNAL: More joy
BY GREG SANDOW
“Shaw’s piece, no surprise, was a delight, just loaded with ideas, some of which seemed (almost with knowing little smiles) to elbow others out of the way, to jump into the center of the music.
And the Smith piece really wowed me. Starting with its Carrot Revolution name. (Which came, the quartet told us, from a remark Cézanne is made to make in a novel he appears in, that in his painting, a single carrot could make a revolution.)
The carrots in the piece…
…might be its musical ideas, which (with the greatest happiness) swerved and slid, as if they weren’t solid and didn’t stand on solid ground. And didn’t need to.
And yet they connected with each other, in ways I’m used to in more strictly classical pieces, pieces where carrots haven’t led a revolution. So playful, so alive, glowing with so much intelligence.”