Gritty Yet Soulful
Pierre Jalbert runs through a series of effects In his “Canticle (String Quartet No. 6),” written for the adventuresome Chiara players and given its New York premiere at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: violinists doubling on crotales (small bells), struck or bowed; the cellist caught up in harmonics; violinists and violist using small glass rods as bouncing bows. The work is alternately contemplative and gritty, Mr. Jalbert said from the stage, “reflective of the time we currently live in,” but it ends in utter serenity, in a movement headed “Soulful, mysterious,” with the first violinist bowing a bell and the other players bowing their instruments in a fading pianissimo.
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