Wigmore Hall
Beethoven – String Quartet
no.13 in B-flat major, op.130
Mozart – String Quintet no.4 in
G minor, KV 516
Eduard Dusinberre, Károly
Schranz (violin)
Geraldine Walther, Louise
Williams (viola)
András Fejér (cello)
Two towering masterpieces
were given here in fine performances: not, perhaps, performances that in
themselves struck me as revelatory in the sense of proposing a new way of
considering the work, but performances which seemed, almost unassumingly, to
permit those works to speak for themselves. Coming not much more than a couple
of hours after having heard Renaud Capuçon in Beethoven, the Takács Quartet
seemed less concerned to ravish, to draw one in through beauty of tone, which
is not to say that Capuçon was only or even primarily concerned with that.
Nevertheless, the difference in approach, or at least in results, could not
help but register.
Beethoven’s op.130 Quartet
opened with a broad introduction to its first movement, an introduction which
nevertheless certainly moved: pretty much Adagio,
ma non troppo, then. The Allegro announced
itself both in terms of continuity and discontinuity, that dialectic of course
being a constant preoccupation in late Beethoven, a riddle for performers and
listeners eternally to reckon with. Interaction, indeed contest, between
different types of material – including its emotional content and expression –
was relished as difficulty; there are no easy answers here. (Having said that,
I did wonder whether a little more of the sheer struggle might have been
communicated in performance.) Homophonic and contrapuntal textures offered especially
prominent contrast. Shards of serenity vied with exultation in music that is
every bit as difficult as Schoenberg or Bartók, arguably more so. A mercurial
release of pent-up energy characterised the ensuing Presto, discontinuities again disconcerting. The players made clear
that the third movement is not to be understood as a conventional ‘slow
movement’, whether in tempo or, at least as important, in its provisional,
nervous character. Almost, perhaps an intermezzo, it remained too complex for
that. A grace that could not paper over the cracks characterised the Alla danza tedesca movement, that
inability to conceal rendering it all the more poignant – or at least
differently poignant than Mozart. Febrile elegance and fluid elaboration
brought us to the very identity of Beethoven’s material and what he
accomplishes with it.
An unhurried, unassuming
dignity marked out the Cavatina. We
knew we were on holy ground, without having to be informed of it; crucially, we
were made to listen, to think. It is a platitude, but probably one worth
repeating, what a different work this becomes with the Grosse Fuge. Here we heard Beethoven’s ‘other’ finale, in which, to
start with at least, he seemed to be returning to, or rather reinventing,
Haydn. There was, of course, no lack of rigour, either in work or performance,
but the character was quite different (if only because, most recently, I seem
to have heard the Grosse Fuge rather
than this movement. Again, there were no easy answers; indeed, the necessary
struggle, not unlike such struggles one experiences in Birtwistle’s music, to
find the guiding thread, penetrated right to the heart of Beethoven’s and our
experience.
If anything, I found the Takács
players’ tone more suited to Mozart (rather to my surprise, given their long
experience in Beethoven, and in any case it is a matter of degree). The first
movement began, suggestive of the great G minor Symphony to come, in medias res. Sonata form in Mozart’s
hands seemed to reinvent itself, not least in terms of operatic example.
Motivic working proved just as crucial to experience and understanding as in
Beethoven, but the lyrico-dramatic context was quite different, and so it
sounded. Mozart’s noble tragedy unfolded, again, as if being permitted to speak
‘for itself’. The terse, tragic impulse heard in the Minuet seemed even to look
forward to Mahler’s Sixth Symphony and its scherzo (at least when that movement
is placed second). Mozart sang here as if delivering an Orphic lament. The trio
seemed less a contrast than a necessary consequence, the ‘relief’ of the major
mode notwithstanding. Truer relief came in the slow movement; despite the
mutes, this was an intense ‘relief’ worthy of the name, with its own
quasi-operatic drama. As throughout, the richness of the inner parts truly
told. (How Mozart clearly loved the viola!) The opening Adagio section to the finale was suffused with longing, reminding
us just how close Mozart is here, and not just here, to Tristan und Isolde. He was thereby enable to surprise us, however
much we expected it, with the major mode. Fragile good spirits had us – just about
– believe in a possibility or at the very least variety of reconciliation that would no
longer be open to Beethoven.
