Wigmore Hall
String Quartet no.5 in A major, op.18 no.5
String Quartet no.4 in C minor, op.18 no.4
String Quartet no.12 in E-flat major, op.127
Pierre Colombet, Gabriel Le Magadure (violins)
Marie Chilemme (viola)
Yuya Okamoto (cello)
I have never been disappointed by a Quatuor Ébène concert, whether at the Wigmore Hall or elsewhere. This all-Beethoven programme offered no exception. Almost my only reservation I shall get out of the way immediately: some surprising intonational difficulties, which should not be exaggerated yet nevertheless were to be heard, in parts of the two quartets from the op.18 set. They seemed related to a similarly surprising withdrawal of vibrato from time to time in the violins: not that this is unusual in itself nowadays, but rather that it is not something I at least associated with this ensemble. Trying new things in performance is generally to be applauded, but that aspect seemed to me something of a work-in-progress.
Otherwise, the first movement of the A major Quartet, op.18 no.5, benefited from a finely judged balance between Beethoven’s twin inheritances from Haydn and Mozart. It was always given space to breathe, without ever sagging, in a performance of balance, variegation, and intensity. There was an appealing Janus-faced quality to the Menuetto, both harking back to Beethoven’s forebears but also forward to the second part of the recital. Its counterpoint told, whilst greater warmth and rusticity in the trio formed a winning contrast. Haydn would surely have nodded and approved. In the third movement, the theme was touching enough, but it was in the variations that Beethoven’s character truly manifested itself, movingly so whether in slower or more rumbunctious music. Variation form was always special to him; here it felt so. After that, a post-Haydn finale, with just the right degree of properly Beethovenian vehemence, was very much the ticket. It constantly confounded, just as it should.
In its C minor predecessor (in the set, rather than this programme), Beethoven the Romantic more fully manifested himself: not only in tonality, but in coiled-spring concision. The players relaxed slightly for the second subject in the opening Allegro ma non tanto, but not only slightly, and this was more a matter of the composer’s writing than performing intervention. The exposition repeat, notably, was no mere repeat but was music transformed by its first playing (and hearing), leading to a development section of great intensity. Here was Beethoven’s C minor daemon—likewise in a further-transformed recapitulation and second development unleashed in its coda. A somewhat stern scherzo opened out a little as it progressed. If it occasionally lost a degree of ension – this is a difficult movement to bring off – there was no such problem in an absorbing Menuetto that was nonetheless anything but an easy listen. The finale again proved full of surprises in the best sense.
I was immediately struck by the richness of sound in the Maestoso introduction to the first movement of the op.127 Quartet. It is, again, partly a matter of the writing, but only partly. Not that what we heard was unvaried, far from it, but the first movement’s ‘base line’ was different. So too, for that matter was the bass line, vividly brought to life by cellist Yuya Okamoto. There was concision here too, again strikingly so, but of a very different kind—and so it felt. Here was music that offered that sense and an apparently contrary sense of expansiveness, as two sides of the same coin. Wagnerian ‘unendliche Melodie’ characterised the Adagio ma non troppo. This was rare ground, albeit inhabited without preciosity. It is difficult not to describe such music and such music-making as sublime, and frankly why should one try? Beethoven’s interventions registered with a due sense of shock, yet always made sense in retrospect, all within a single, miraculous breath. A quizzical yet deeply felt scherzo seemed to extend its human reach still further in the radicalism of its trio material. The finale’s perfect sense of character and function was fully realised in practice: uncompromising, without ‘effects’ or astringency. There is truly no music ‘like’ this. Its ultimate eruption felt all the more joyous for being so hard-won.
