Last night, the St. Lawrence String Quartet was greeted with thunderous applause as they walked onto the stage of Reynolds Performance Hall. As Artist-in-Residence for part of this semester in our Department of Music, the quartet gave an amazing performance that consisted of three selections and a surprise composition.

The ensemble consists of first violinist Geoff Nuttall, second violinist Scott St. John, Lesley Robertson on viola and Christopher Constanza on cello. They all teach music at Stanford University where the Canadian-based quartet has been housed as Ensemble-in-Residence since 1998.

The concert began with Ludwig van Beethoven’s “String Quartet in A-Major, Op, 18, No. 5.” The first and second movements were light and almost pastoral in parts then would crescendo into a more pronounced and assertive sound. I could feel the passion of the musicians. They were animated and perfectly in sync, as if they were all thinking as one. The fourth movement opened with a more demure sound, then reach a crescendo with a loud and exciting ending.

The second piece was “String Quartet in F major” by French composer, Maurice Ravel. Some of you may recognize Ravel as the composer of the famous piece, “Boléro.” Ravel’s music was strikingly different to that of Beethoven. Ravel’s composition seemed to have a sense of urgency and bravado. It was almost as if the musicians were in a trance and their world was only focused on the music as they moved back and forth with each nuance. They finished the piece and were immediately met with a standing ovation traveling from the front to the back of the hall.

After the intermission, the quartet was joined by some UCA music students. They performed Antonin Dvorak’s “Serenade.” They all stood, except for the cellos, to play the piece with its many tempo differences and dynamics. The piece ended and the students left the stage as it was cleared for the quartet to play their last piece.

Their last work was “String Quartet,” a piece composed especially for them by John Adams. Nuttall said it was the Arkansas premier of the composition.  The Adams piece was constantly changing in tempo and contained an interesting moment when it almost sounded like the cellist and violist were playing some melodic and intense Morse Code. Like before, they ended with their bows frozen for a second in midair and slowly came down to applause. Another standing ovation immediately followed.

“The intensity and focus that it takes to perform a piece like the one by Adams is incredible,” Karla Fournier, orchestra director for Conway schools, said after the concert.