Wigmore Hall
Beethoven:
String Quartet in F major,
op.18 no.1
Brahms:
String Quartet in C minor,
op.51 no.1
Beethoven:
String Quartet in F major,
op.135
Pierre Colombet, Gabriel Le Magadure (violins)
Marie Chilemme (viola)
Raphaël Merlin (cello)
This was, by any standards, an
evening of fine performances from the Quatuor Ebène. If I still felt a few nagging
doubts at the close, I am not even sure why. Perhaps it was the programming. If
the idea of Beethoven’s first – in official numbering – and last string
quartets on the same programme had much to recommend it, was Brahms’s First
Quartet an ideal work to hear in between them? Perhaps it was the identity of
that work, no matter what the performance or programme. Dyed in the wool
Brahmsian that I may be, I still find it a very tough nut to crack. Perhaps it
was just me in some other way. Why mention that at all? Only really to suggest
that any hint of the lukewarm may reflect more upon me than upon the
performances, from which, to be fair, I learned much about the works in
question.
The first movement of Beethoven’s
op.18 no.1 received an alert, cultivated performance form the outset. Marrying
Haydn and Mozart, it was yet never reducible to its origins. Mozart sounded
most evident in the balance between phrases, Haydn in the exploratory boldness
of the development section, then read into the recapitulation. It was difficult
not to think of the composer’s First Symphony. Richly expressive flow, like a
river and its tributaries, proved a welcome characteristic of the slow
movement. Or was it more akin to a tree and its branches? Either way – words will
always be insufficient – it worked. There was passion, in more than one sense,
to Beethoven’s vehement outbursts: unnerving, yet unquestionably right. If the
fleet scherzo lacked the true simplicity of later Beethoven (as well as its
concomitant complexity) that surely reflects the work rather than its
performance. Classical poise, complicated by more than a necessary hint of the neo-Classical
– it was already too late quite to be Mozart – characterised an accomplished
account of the finale.
There was no denying the
motivic concision of the Ebène’s Brahms op.51 no.1, nor the expressive
consequences of that concision. I was struck anew by how everything at least
seemed to arise – arguably did – from those opening bars, not least the
particular character of the viola writing (excellent work indeed from Marie
Chilemme). If anything, that concision and concentration – almost yet not quite
the same thing – increased as the first movement progressed: Brahms on a coil
spring. The Romanze sang, insofar as
Brahms permits; it likewise conveyed, even dramatised his complex reticence.
Introverted, difficult, the scherzo paved the way for a trio all the more
inscrutable, offering a degree of release in the finale, its cumulative motivic
force more overwhelming still than the first movement. The players certainly
had this music’s measure; perhaps one day I shall warm to it more than I yet am
able.
Good natured mastery
characterised the first movement of Beethoven’s op.135: Haydn aufgehoben. Beethoven’s counterpoint
rightly sounded quite different, though, both in immediate nature and function.
The composer’s – and the performance’s – syntheses sounded so much less
effortful than Brahms’s, which again is surely meet and right. Answering
phrases now sounded quite unlike those of Mozart, underlining the gulf between
this and the opening quartet. The relationship between vehemence and precision in
the second movement was finely judged. Unrelenting in the best sense, the music looked ahead to Bartók, even beyond. A poised, dignified slow movement voiced
a strangeness of harmony – still in 2018 – that could yet reconcile, only to be
met by a duly disorienting introduction to the finale. Humanity ultimately won
out in an integrative performance of the finale that certainly did not shirk
its difficulties: much, then, to ponder.
