Jupiter String Quartet will mix classic and contemporary music in Sunday concert

It's been 12 years since the Jupiter String Quartet played in Tuscaloosa, at the University of Alabama's Moody Music Building, so violist Liz Freivogel's memories, the specifics, are a little hazy.

"I do remember they fed us some nice home-cooked food," she said, laughing. So no pressure, Chamber Music Tuscaloosa, hosting organization for Sunday's 3 p.m. concert in the Moody Recital Hall, on the University of Alabama campus. Admission is free, but any and all are welcome to donate, at www.chambermusictuscaloosa.org/store.

All such ensembles are intimate by nature and necessity, relying on two violins, a viola and a cello. The Jupiter enjoyed a natural jumpstart as violist Liz plays with younger sister Meg Freivogel, on violin. They grew up mostly in the Washington, D.C., area, picking up love for chamber music from teacher Oliver Edel.

The Freivogels were kids of reporters for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, posted on the capital beat, who were "not musical at all." But when the kids began studying, via the Suzuki method, which emphasizes musical immersion at an early age, William and Margaret Freivogel proved pretty good at taking notes.

The sisters began playing quartets with their brothers on cello and violin; the youngest still plays professionally, with the Jasper String Quartet. The older brother, odd man out, became a physicist. Meg is married to the Jupiter's cellist Daniel McDonough, and they've known and worked with violinist Nelson Lee since years at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

"Nelson and Meg were in the same violin studio in Cleveland," Liz Freivogel said. "They called me up because they needed a violist .... Eventually we entered school together as a quartet in Boston."

That was 20 years ago. Without a long-term plan, the four spent early years rehearsing much, performing little, suffering rises and falls. They'd all been playing since youth -- Lee grew up as child of pianists; his twin sisters Alicia and Andrea are also pro musicians -- but needed time to cultivate the group sound, learn how to blend and balance.

"Eventually we got a manager, which helped us to get more concerts," Freivogel said., "and we entered some competitions, which is really stressful, but did help kickstart our career a little bit."

The Jupiter -- named for the planet shining most prominently as the group formed, and because the astrological symbol for Jupiter, a Greek zeta with a stroke indicating abbreviation, resembles the number four -- took grand prizes in the Banff International String Quartet Competition, and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition in 2004. Winning the next year's Young Concert Artists International auditions in New York City set them out on tour. They also won the Cleveland Quartet Award from Chamber Music America in 2007.

Years of traveling and growing families urged them to seek a fixed home, so they were hired as a resident company at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, about a decade back. The New Yorker wrote of the group: “The Jupiter String Quartet, an ensemble of eloquent intensity, has matured into one of the mainstays of the American chamber-music scene.”

"We wanted all four to be very equal, in terms of input and emotional connection to the music," Freivogel said. "No one of us can just be coasting along for the ride; we're all actively involved in the decision-making."

Familial links mostly work in their favor, though "... we always have our struggle to be professional with each other," she said. "Siblings can get under each other's skins so easily, read each other's moods.... But basically, we just like one another."

Though there's a deep vein of works to draw from, the Jupiter's never specialized in any era, preferring to mix it up, in the style of predecessors such as the Cleveland String Quartet, and Takashi Mizuhashi Quartet. Sunday's concert reflects that, beginning with Franz Joseph Haydn's String Quaret No. 24 in A Major, Opus 20; then moving on to a piece written by Illinois composer Stephen Andrew Taylor, "Chaconne/Labyrinth"; and closing with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's String Quartet No. 1 in D Major, Opus 11.

The Haydn balances demands. Though the first violin is still prominent, the other three voices contribute more than in some of his earlier compositions, Freivogel said.

Taylor is a friend of the quartet who also teaches at UA. Originally commissioned by the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music as a work for seven or eight instruments, the new piece turned into a quartet when Taylor realized he wouldn't be able to assemble musicians during shutdowns. He drew inspiration from the COVID-19 pandemic.

"It starts very serenely, beautifully, then gradually works itself into a frenzy," Freivogel said, "then you kind of come back out the other side," like Ariadne following the thread out of the labyrinth.

Chaconne is an old-fashioned word for looping chord progression, as found in 12-bar blues, or Bach. Taylor wrote: "My chords are a little weirder, using just intonation to find notes that don’t exist on the piano keyboard." So the quartet's playing repetitions, but also winding in and out of a labyrinth, with coronavirus lurking as menacing Minotaur.

"There's a real blending of dissonance and consonance in the tonality," Freivogel said, referring to perceived disharmony and harmony, "bending of the pitches ... kind of haunting, in a way. It almost sounds like it's melting. "

Those bends on the fingerboard work against classic training, as fretless string players seek exacting positions. To bend, they must aim a little higher or lower, sliding off what they think of as the precisely correct spot.

"And there are percussive effects, pizzicato (plucking, rather than bowing the strings), so there's a lot to look at as we play," she said. "It's rhythmically very complex, extreme in terms of the technique."

A video of the Jupiter can be found on Youtube, titled "Chaconne/Labyrinth for string quartet," dated May 25, 2022, though recorded from the April 5, 2021 debut. The physicality is obvious, clearly pushing the musicians beyond standard techniques throughout the 19:39 work, with theatrically mad aural hints of Bernard Hermann, or the Stephen Sondheim of "Sweeney Todd," and an even stronger implication of its technical complexity.

Taylor wrote that and other pieces “... without any idea of them being executed by humans. They were not meant to be performable,” he said, in an interview for his campus' news bureau. They were intended to be played only via synthesizer, with varying pitches, timbres and tempi meant to represent twisting and turning chains of amino acids. “I really thought the Jupiters would come back and say, ‘I’m sorry, it’s not possible to be performed by human beings,’ but they just nailed it," he said in that interview.

The Jupiter may record "Chaconne/Labyrinth" for an upcoming CD, where, as with concerts, they prefer blends.

"It's always a struggle between wanting to satisfy (expectations), all these amazing works for quartet that people are playing with," she said, "and at the same time we want to push people to listen to types of music that they may not have encountered before, something that might just stretch their ears a little bit.

"We've tried to never get stuck in a pigeonhole. We kind of play everything, and ultimately, it all connects."

Following "Chaconne/Labyrinth" and intermission, the Jupiter will conclude with another traditional beauty, Tchaikovsky's String Quartet No. 1 in D Major, Opus 11.

"There's a famous slow movement that's often been played separately from the quartet," Freivogel said, "with a very romantic flavor."

David Duff of Chamber Music Tuscaloosa said booking here in the fall is tough, due to football weekends -- the Crimson Tide is at Texas on Saturday -- "... but we always manage to find some superior talents to bring in," he said.

"It's so nice to just be able to play for live audiences again," Freivogel said.

For more, see www.jupiterquartet.com, or www.chambermusictuscaloosa.org.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Jupiter String Quartet back for first Tuscaloosa concert in 12 years