Pierre Boulez Saal
Haydn: String Quartet in D
major, op.20 no.4, Hob. III:34
Ligeti: String Quartet no.1,
‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’Dvořák: String Quartet no.12 in F major, op.96, ‘American’
Corina Belcea, Axel Schacher (violins)
Krzysztof Chorzelski (viola)
Antoine Lederlin (cello)
The Pierre Boulez Saal’s new
chamber music season opened with a concert from the Belcea Quartet. This was
for me, I am afraid, something of a case of swings and roundabouts, although I
had the distinct impression that my reservations were not shared by the
audience at large. At any rate, if it was only really the performance of Ligeti’s
First String Quartet that truly convinced me, to hear a fine Ligeti performance
is always worth the effort. And more than that, it was lovely to be back in
Berlin’s wonderful salle modulable.
I was really rather surprised
by the Quartet’s performance of Haydn’s op.20 no.4. This was not a group I had
thought of as having been involved in ‘authenticity’, but the performance
proved to be very low on vibrato, often without any at all, and generally quite
abrasive in style. The very opening of the first movement worked rather well in
that sense, I thought: dark and exploratory, almost as if looking forward to
late Haydn. However, much of the rest I found too overtly ‘rhetorical’, or better,
rhetorical at the expense of a longer line. (Others will clearly have thought
differently.) There was much to admire in that, not least the very different ‘characters’
of particular figures, especially as allied to different note values. But
overall, I found the performance muted and somewhat restricted in expressive
terms. Nevertheless, the second movement sounded beautifully sad, and there was
something to be said of the boisterous rusticity of the ‘Menuet alla Zingarese’
and the strong contrast of its trio. Moreover, the finale came off best of all,
at least for me: more properly integrative than any other. The complexity of
its material certainly came across too. If only that could have been read back,
to a certain extent, into the patchier first movement.
Ligeti’s First Quartet was
played with a very different, undeniably ‘modern’, if not especially ‘modernist’,
tone. It owes much, of course, to Bartók, as we would proceed to hear; but at
the beginning, it was Berg and Schoenberg who came at least as strongly to mind
in the tortured hyper-Romanticism of the string lines and their paths. This may
or may not be ‘mature’ Ligeti; the composer said not. It nevertheless proved
anything but predictable, and offered a recognisable anarchism and attendant
humour. This was music and performance ‘on the cusp’ in various ways, almost as
if it were on the verge of turning into ‘real’ or ‘more real’ Ligeti. It was
highly wrought, spellbinding drama, whether overtly violent or sweetly
sensuous. Weird remnants of tonality – yes, it is they that are weird here –
duly disconcerted, as did that persistent, if not constant, sense of the cusp.
Dvořak’s ‘American’ Quartet
opened in impressive, but perhaps somewhat fussy, fashion, the variety of
articulation threatening to overwhelm, as in Haydn, a sense of longer line. I
very much had the sense that this was a reading that had been rethought, but
which had perhaps not quite ‘bedded down’: better that, though, than the merely
routine. Formal propulsion was also sometimes missing – in that sense, it would
be, without line – and perhaps especially in the first movement. The slow
movement sounded more strongly founded, rhythmically and harmonically, and
emerged much stronger for it. All solos and duets were beautifully taken; if it
were, perhaps, Antoine Lederlin’s cello solos that lodged themselves most
deeply in the memory, that is probably more a consequence of Dvořak’s writing
than anything else. The third and fourth movements again proved somewhat fussy,
although I do not wish to exaggerate. It would be interesting to hear the
Belcea Quartet again in this music, perhaps in a year’s time, it only to see
whether my suspicions were at all well founded.
