Wigmore Hall
Haydn:
String Quartet in D major,
op.20 no.4
Ligeti:
String Quartet no.2
Beethoven:
String Quartet in E-flat
major, op.127
Oliver Heath, Sara Wolstenholme (violins)
Gary Pomeroy (viola)
Christopher Murray (cello)
To the Wigmore Hall for a
highly rewarding programme of Haydn, Ligeti, and Beethoven from the excellent
Heath Quartet: all standing, save the cellist. Whilst it would be banal in the
extreme to attribute such alert, illuminating performances to the lack of seating,
it doubtless did no harm. Who knows? At any rate, those of us who were sedentary
doubtless found ourselves on the edge of our seats, such was the electricity of
the music-making we heard.
Haydn always seems to be on the
cusp; most great composers do when considered historically. (A good few lesser
composers too, come to think of it.) He is surely nowhere more so, however,
than in his op.20 quartets, of which he heard the fourth, in D major. ‘Baroque’
and ‘Classical’ are little more than labels, really, often highly misleading
labels at that, but perhaps that cusp had said something to tell us – at least
until the sudden eruptions of the first movement, which, if not quite
Beethovenian, were not exactly un-Beethovenian either. Cultivated tone,
conversation, and keen dramatic sense conspired to make play with a thoroughly dialectical
relationship between material and its performance. And so, it continued,
throughout the development and recapitulation, not least between counterpoint
and harmony. Relative – only relative, for this was no no-vibrato freak-show –
astringency of tone in the slow movement proved highly apt for the numerous
suspensions and general Affekt. The
variations’ unfolding proved unquestionably Haydnesque, quite different from,
say, that of Mozart or Beethoven – without ever feeling the need to trumpet
individuality or, God help us, ‘quirkiness’. There was much fun, both ‘rustic’
and ‘intellectual’, to be had in the ‘Menuet alla zingarese’, with respect to
metre and its relationship to harmony. The trio properly relaxed, going its own
way: not less but differently challenging. The Heaths’ finale captured the
essence of Haydn’s marking (‘Presto e scherzando’) and, beyond it, a sheer
brilliance that seemed to extend from the minuet and trio rather than merely
contrast with it. It had all the hallmarks of one of Haydn’s free-wheeling
symphonic finales, whilst retaining the individual and conversational voices of
his quartet writing. Best of all, it put a smile on my face.
Ligeti’s Second Quartet (1968)
opened with an éclat from which, it seemed, both all and nothing derived:
testament to a decidedly un-, even anti-Haydn-and-Beethoven, denial of motivic
development in a ‘conventional’ sense. Scurrying sounds, eruptions, a primacy
of texture, and much else besides pointed to kinship instead with a work such
as Ramifications, also heard in a
Wigmore Hall concert earlier this month (albeit onlocation at the Roundhouse). And that was only in the first few bars! As
with George Benjamin and the Ensemble Modern in that concert, the Heath Quartet
made us listen – as, of course, did Ligeti. Indeed, it was the composer’s sheer
invention, rather than any particular manifestion thereof, that proved most
suggestive of kinship with the Classical masters who were his companions on the
programme. The second movement, ‘Sostenuto, molto calmo’, sang in and through
the uncertainity of an overarching drama that was underway, yet nowhere near
resolution, be it on a micro- or macro-level. Technique, both in work and
performance, truly proved the liberator of the imagination – just as in Haydn.
The central, third movement, ‘Come
un meccanismo di precisione’, certainly spoke of its marking, a multiplicity of
ghosts making themselves felt in this machine or mechanism – or should it have
been machines in this uncanny, ghostly world? Clocks ticked and malfunctioned,
if only figuratively, yet for that reason perhaps all the more tellingly, for
they struck as if heartbeats: heartbeats, perhaps, of insanity. Truly pivotal,
then, prefacing a wonderful sense of fourth movement play between apparent
unanimity and harmony. But was it play? Everything felt both strongly purposive
and called into question. The final movement brought delicacy and apparent
continuity, at least at first. Yet again, the more one listened, the more one
doubted, Ligeti’s notes both binding together and dissolving their very
material: ever changing and yet ever similar. It was a finale, yes, just as
much as Haydn’s had been, but one was left in no doubt that a finale by now
meant something quite different.
The opening of Beethoven’s
op.127 Quartet offered so much in the way of E-flat resonance (in more than one
sense). The so-called Emperor Concerto,
Mozart in all manner of guises: such were the ghosts briefly summoned, prior to
a decidedly late, different path on which Beethoven and his interpreters led
us: exploratory, yet in the surest of hands. It may be a cliché – what is not,
when writing of this music? – but the Heaths truly imparted a sense, however
illusory, of the music being composed on the spot: nothing taken for granted,
everything ‘new’. Once again, the first movement from its outset made us listen
to, indeed participate in, a drama of dialectics, and a specifically tonal
drama in this case, a drama of E-flat major. Motivic method reasserted itself
in the wake of Ligeti: no mere reversion, perhaps even a progression.
Concision, however, was not the least of the qualities held in common, at least
in context.
How does one speak of a late
Beethoven slow movement? Maybe one should not even try. This, at any rate,
unfolded with a rapt sublimity – another cliché, I know – that was anything but
generic, bathed, it seemed, in the glow of the Missa solemnis. And how we were compelled to listen to Beethoven’s
harmony! In a concert offering us startling original third movements, Beethoven’s
scherzo had nothing to fear. Tension and relaxation proved both co-dependent
and perfectly judged. Metrical dislocations may have recalled Haydn, but they
were very much the composer’s, the work’s, the performance’s own. Modernist and
neoclassical impulses were held and encouraged in dialogue for the finale. By
what? By many things, but not least a gruff humour that spoke of a humanity it
is difficult not to think of as ‘Beethovenian’. Such, once again, proved just
the right note for a finale, moreover for this
finale.
