Takács Quartet: Haydn, Britten, and Beethoven, 12 November 2024

Wigmore Hall

Haydn: String Quartet in C major, op.54 no.2, Hob.III:57
Britten: String Quartet no.2 in C major, op.36
Beethoven: String Quartet no.16 in F major, op.135

Eduard Dusinberre, Harumi Rhodes (violins)

Richard O’Neill (viola)

András Féjer (cello)

It is always a joy to hear the Takács Quartet and, in my case, it had been a little while, so was all the more welcome. This Wigmore Hall recital opened with an outstanding performance of the second of Haydn’s ‘Tost’ Quartets, totally ‘inside’ the music from the off, presentation and subsequent development of Haydn’s ideas making that abundantly clear. Surprises duly registered, however often one might have heard them before: not through exaggeration, but through sound musical means, delivered as fresh as the day they were born. Haydn’s invention truly spoke throughout this first movement and beyond, structure becoming form in real time. A gravely beautiful Adagio and its flights of first violin fantasy as brought to life as Eduard Dusinberre cast shadows back into the Baroque and forward to Beethoven and beyond. It led directly into a spirited yet graceful minuet, its trio sternly impassioned as if developing sentiments from the slow movement as well as responding to its sibling. The finale’s formal experimentation again seemed to look forward to Beethoven, late Beethoven at that, its first and third sections elegant and heartfelt, full of harmonic tension and clear of direction. The brief Presto interlude achieved the paradox of skittish rigour, Haydn’s quizzical enigma enhanced. 

I have no doubt Britten’s Second Quartet received a performance of similar commitment and excellence, though the work itself pales beside Haydn (and Beethoven), suggesting, as the composer’s instrumental music often does, that words and, in many cases, a stage were necessary if not to ignite then to discipline his compositional imagination. It was certainly a very different tradition from Haydn’s that came to mind in the first two movements, that of relatively recent Russian music: Prokofiev at his more discursive more than Shostakovich, though the latter’s hysterical tendencies exhibited themselves from time to time. The Takács players imbued their performance with character and rigour, and the second movement at least did not outstay its welcome. For all the talk of Purcell – and indeed the overt attempt at homage – the chacony finale seemed lacking in his spirit or much of any other. This performance made as good sense of it as any, but to me it remained grey music, without much in the way of the Peter Grimes-like dramatic leavening of the first movement’s opening. 

Where the rot set in was Britten’s notorious verdict on Beethoven. Give me that rot any day, especially in so all-encompassing a performance as that of the Takács Quartet of his final quartet, op.135. Its opening was inviting, good-humoured, and mysterious in equal measure. That sense of productive, generative balance was typical of the first movement as a whole, imbued with the character as well as the tempo of an Allegretto, ever developing in a reading as spacious as it was intense. It very much felt as if it picked up where Haydn and also the Beethoven of the Eighth Symphony had left off. The ensuing Vivace similarly balanced control and freedom, regularity and the danger of careering out of control. Deeply felt and beautifully sung, the slow movement’s balance between introversion and extroversion was inevitably weighted toward the former, yet outward expression told in the moment, both at micro- and macro-levels. It was played and thus heard as if in a single breath. Following a questing introduction, sad and vehement, seeming both to confront the terrible, tragic truth of existence and yet also to move on, Meistersinger-like, to cope with it in complexity, the finale seemed to hark back to earlier Beethoven, the Razumovsky quartets in particular, yet also to know that it could not merely return. And yet, it persisted. Such, after all, is our lot. If our world is going to end, then let it be here.

Takács Quartet - Beethoven and Mozart, 9 November 2014

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.

Takács Quartet/Power - Brahms and Haydn, 20 February 2013

Wigmore Hall

Brahms – String Quartet no.2 in A minor, op.51 no.2

Haydn – String Quartet in B-flat major, op.76 no.4, ‘Sunrise’
Brahms – String Quintet in G major, op.111

Edward Dusinberre, Károly Schranz (violins)

Geraldine Walther (viola)

András Fejér (cello)

Lawrence Power (viola)

 

 

The Takács Quartet, Wigmore Hall Associate Artists, is this week offering two concerts in which a Brahms quartet and a Haydn quartet are presented with a Brahms quintet. Friday’s concert will bring Brahms’s op.51 no.1, Haydn’s op.76 no.5, and Brahms’s Piano Quintet (with Charles Owen). This concert had the second of Brahms’s quartets, Haydn’s ‘Sunrise’ Quartet, op.76 no.4, and the G major Quintet, for which the Takács players were joined by violist Lawrence Power.

 

Brahms’s A minor Quartet opened in cultivated fashion, the players offering a flexibility that would pervade the performance as a whole. This was not the most richly Romantic Brahms, and there was perhaps a degree of loss in that, but there were gains too. Certainly that unexaggerated flexibility of tempo in the first movement and beyond seemed consonant in the best, that is un-slavish, sense with what we know of Brahms’s own performing practice in his music. A fine balance was upheld and explored between themes, motifs, and fragments – at times, almost Webern-like – and the longer line, the overall cumulative effect very much that of the ‘developing variation’ Schoenberg discerned in Brahms’s music and his own. Form was properly dynamic in conception and execution. The second movement was again very well-judged, part-way between Schumannesque intermezzo and something ‘later’ – always a concern in Brahms. ‘Dramatic’ outbursts made their point, yet were seamlessly integrated into a greater whole. There was melancholy, to be sure, but not, as in Nietzsche’s cruel jibe, ‘melancholy of impotence’, likewise in the third movement, its opening dramatically pregnant, its later counterpoint handled lightly yet without being underestimated. Counterpoint was afforded greater weight in the finale, in a reading of increasing cumulative power, which, tensions beneath the surface notwithstanding, yet retained a certain Viennese elegance.

 

Haydn’s ‘Sunrise’ Quartet sounded from its opening bars, as it should, as though Haydn were very much part of the same tradition as Brahms and yet in a sense more ‘timely’, less ‘late’, in his exploratory Classicism. The first movement showed admirable display for Haydn’s concision and spirit; if I have heard more extrovert performances, this nevertheless could not help but make me smile. Every note counted, as it must. Interplay between slow opening material – the apparent ‘introduction’ that is actually the beginning of the exposition proper – and what follows proved almost operatic, Mozart not so distant. The slow movement was heard as if in one, immensely variegated, breath, a model of intelligent and inviting Haydn playing. Infectious Schwung characterised the minuet, though its reprise suffered somewhat from imperfect intonation; the trio offered a delightful sense of partially deconstructed rusticity. There was again a Mozartian – well, almost Mozartian – poise to the final movement, but the rigour to the working out was unmistakeably Haydn’s own, as were the surprises.

 

Tuning was, rather to my surprise, a little wayward from the cellist in the opening of Brahms’s G major String Quintet; that had been rectified the second time around. The performance as a whole did not quite seem to hit its stride until the second subject, the opening material sounding slightly forced in its projection. It was a joy throughout, though, to hear that extra richness afforded by the addition of Power’s viola; if ever a composer were likely to benefit from such an opportunity, it was surely Brahms. The flexibility of the opening quartet was once again very much in evidence, especially dring the development and recapitulation. What one might call ‘detailed intensity’ came to the fore in the second movement, which nevertheless retained a sense of overall simplicity, however deceptive, almost akin to a superior ‘song without words’. The febrile quality to the third movement seemed just right: unstable and yet ultimately fulfilling, redolent once again of the worlds of Schoenberg and Webern. However much he might try, Brahms at his ‘late’ juncture cannot recapture Haydn’s unbounded joy. High, if mediated, spirits registered all the same in the finale.

Takács Quartet - Beethoven, 13 May 2010

Queen Elizabeth Hall

String Quartet no.7 in F major, op.59 no.1, ‘Razumovsky’
String Quartet no.13 in B-flat major, op.130, with Grosse Fuge, op.133

Edward Dusinberre, Lina Bahn (violins)
Geraldine Walther (viola)
András Fejér (violoncello)

This was the final concert in the Takács Quartet’s survey of the complete Beethoven quartets at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, itself part of the Southbank Centre’s Cycles of Beethoven series, from which I heard Daniel Barenboim’s presentation with the Staatskapelle Berlin of all five piano concertos (see reviews for January and February). Alas, this was the only of the Takács concerts I attended: on this evidence, I wish I had heard all of the performances. The players certainly went out in style, with the first Razumovsky quartet and op.130, replete with Grosse Fuge. (They had given the same quartet with the alternative finale in the first concert, back in November.) Despite the temporary loss of second violinist, Karoly Schranz, to rotator cuff surgery – he is due back on the platform in September – members of the quartet, welcoming Lina Bahn to the fold, seemed utterly at home with each other, individually and corporately.

There was an apt sense of new possibilities to the first Razumovsky quartet. Beethoven’s middle period only seems less extraordinary than his late period because so many of the works are so apparently familiar. What one needs to do is listen to be jolted out of complacency. The Takács Quartet ensured that listen is what we did, drawing us in with storytellers’ wit and sheer joy in the composer’s ingenuity, here every bit the equal of Haydn’s. Counterpoint was not only clear but meaningful, propelling us through Beethoven’s tonal plan and, especially during the first movement, relishing tonal ambiguities and their emphatic resolution. Such an approach was a hallmark of the entire performance, for instance during the strange opening of the second movement, those celebrated repeated notes pregnant with possibility. ‘Which way will Beethoven turn?’ one asked, even though, as a consequence of that ‘apparent’ familiarity, one thought one already ‘knew’ the answer. Underlying all exploration and resolution was the absolute security of cellist András Fejér’s cello bass line: not just secure but decisive – and not just decisive but subtle of inflection.

The Adagio molto e mesto was mesto (sad) indeed, but never maudlin. Players who think that maintenance of momentum involves faster tempo should listen to this: not that it felt especially slow; it simply felt ‘right’, like any well-chosen tempo. Nor was there any of the short-breathed phrasing that passes for Beethoven performance today; that naturalness of unfolding, concealing a great deal of art, was present throughout. One often thinks of the ‘finale problem’ with respect to Beethoven; in many respects, it is a problem of our own devising. Just because greater weight was ascribed to open movements, it does not necessarily follow that Beethoven encountered difficulty in balance and conclusion. A huge amount of nonsense is spoken about the Eroica finale in this respect. Listen to a good performance – easier said than done, I admit – and the ‘problem’ disappears, ‘surmounted’ in triumph. This quartet’s finale is less triumphant, but again there is no problem. The players successfully navigated between apparent ‘lightness’ of mood, born of the Russian theme, and the requisite weight and purpose demanded by Beethoven’s goal-oriented trajectory. Nothing drew attention to itself; there was no need to do so.

With one important exception – to which I shall come shortly – the players equally had the measure of op.130. The first two movement, and not only these, impressed with the sense of dislocation, fragmentation, and eventual piecing together. Quite rightly, this entailed effort on the listener’s part – how could it be otherwise? – but such effort would be in vain, were one not in capable performing hands. The variety of touch, sonority, vibrato, indeed of anything on which the quartet could legitimately draw: all this contributed to a fine exploration of what Beethoven offers, suggests, and eventually demands. First violinist Edward Dusinberre’s tonal gradation was an especial joy in the Andante con moto, ma non troppo – itself a further example of the players’ gift for making tempo choices sound right. As with all the best games, the sense of play in the Alla danza tedesca served to heighten the understanding that something important was unfolding – but only at the end might one begin to piece together what it had been and what it would be.

However, the Cavatina emerged a little plain-spoken, and this brings me to my only real reservation concerning the performance. Beethoven’s sublime simplicity is an extraordinary difficult thing to bring off – especially so in our distinctly unheroic, non-transcendental age. The song was beautiful, but I missed that crucial sense of transcendence. Delight in the composer’s ingenuity takes us along away, but that particular sense of vouchsafing divinity was not to be experienced; such would perhaps have been a greater fault in a performance of the symphonies or piano sonatas, but it registered nevertheless. There was, however, much compensation to be had in a truly coruscating performance of the Grosse Fuge, all niceties flung aside, Beethoven’s endlessly striving radicalism thrust firmly centre stage. I was taken aback – and positively so – by the refusal to prettify or beautify, by the sheer violence of the Takács Quartet’s response. And the central section here did achieve that transcendence I had missed earlier. This truly is music that threatens to make even Bartók sound conventional.