Quartet Will Test Limits With Marathon Performance

By Amber Lester Kennedy Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Most of us couldn’t do the same thing for six hours with no breaks. No matter the task, it would take a level of physical and mental endurance few people possess. But on Thursday, four musicians will attempt just that when they play Morton Feldman’s six-hour-long piece, “String Quartet #2.”

The Flux String Quartet, artists-in-residence at The College of William and Mary, will cap their year of performances with the musical marathon. The free performance will begin at 5 p.m. Thursday in Chesapeake Room A of the Sadler Center. The FLUX String Quartet will take no breaks during the concert, but audience members are encouraged to walk in and out of the theater.

The quartet last took on the composition four years ago. Because the work is so rarely performed, a Feldman historian named Chris Villars tracks performances on his website. Since 1999, the piece has been played 31 times world-wide, never in Virginia.

“We’re very psyched; it’s such a rare thing,” said Tom Chiu, founder of the FLUX String Quartet. “We’re very thrilled to be bringing it to Williamsburg and William and Mary.”

To prepare for the endurance test, the group practices parts of the piece, but never the entire composition in one sitting. “We do not run the piece down, so to speak,” Chiu said. “We work on the piece and as we get closer to the concert day, like a marathon runner we build up to longer sections. Maybe a runner will run seven or ten miles; it’s a similar thing with us. We might pick an hour and a half or two-hour section of the piece to play.

Chiu noted that playing Feldman’s piece takes not only the physical endurance to continue to play an instrument, but the mental ability to make the performance worthwhile. “The obvious challenge is endurance, but what I would add to that is not just the physical endurance, but the mental endurance,” he said. “The concentration and the focus that it takes are amazing.”

He likens the lengthy piece to a very good, long movie. “The length of six hours is not really a gimmick,” he said. “This piece is a very glacial matter; the length is appropriate in my opinion.”

The FLUX Quartet – violinists Chiu and Conrad Harris; viola player Max Mandel; and cellist Felix Fan – has performed at the Library of Congress, the Kennedy Center for the Arts and Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, among others. Its repertoire balances the music of notable pioneers along with new works by modern composers, including David First, Roscoe Mitchell, Matthew Welch and John Zorn.