San Francisco Classical Voice

The six Bartók string quartets--how modern they still sound! To hear performances of the Second, Fourth and Sixth Quartets as self-assured, refined, yet passionate as the Takács Quartet's last Sunday afternoon in Hertz Hall is inspirational.

Written between 1908 and 1939, these compositions reflect every important stage of Bartók's artistic development, opening a unique window on his artistic growth. They are his most concentrated works; complex, multi-layered. A synthesis of the passionate and the rational, of European art music and the folk music of Bartók's rural homeland, these six quartets represent the ultimate musical hurdle for a modern professional string quartet. Bartók puts extreme demands on each performer and the ensemble as a whole, stretching the accepted boundaries of the string quartet medium in virtuosity, flexibility and range of expression.

The Second String Quartet (1917) shows for the first time in Bartók's music a convincing fusion of folk elements and his own expressive language. The driving rhythms of the second movement, Allegro molto capriccioso, come directly from the Arab folk music of North Africa, which Bartók had visited. Elsewhere, the rhythms and harmonies of folk music permeate the work, giving it a freshness of spirit and expression that the Takács Quartet caught admirably.

Polished and technically assured, the quartet presented the score with clarity and color. While their loudest playing didn't have quite enough edge, a bit of the music's essential roughness polished away, the pianissimi were haunting, and melodies of the first movement, simply performed, were tinged with sadness. The Arab rhythms of the second movement had the requisite verve, while the glittering coda at the end was breathtaking. A wonderful sense of dramatic space was created in the third movement, Lento, the music allowed to breathe in a natural way.

The Fourth Quartet (1928) is a bold essay in form; an all-encompassing arch, its cornerstone the slow third movement where he introduces his "night music", the rustling, murmuring sounds of darkness. Considered perhaps his greatest quartet, the Fourth dazzles with inventiveness and exhilarating range of expression. New techniques are piled on--the "snap" pizzicato (later renamed the "Bartók snap"), wild glissandi, col legno (playing with the wood of the bow).

The Takács played this Fourth Quartet in a different manner than they had the Second. A new vigor infused the group. This time there was the edge of roughness appropriate to the music--the composer himself never insisted that this music be "beautiful." The extended, quasi-improvisatory cello solo that begins the third movement was sensitively handled by Andras Fejer. The pizzicato fourth movement was played lightly with a welcome dose of humor. Their energy and attention to detail was unflagging.

My personal favorite among the Bartók quartets is the Sixth, perhaps because it begins with a viola solo! Written in 1939 in the shadow of disaster in Europe, it has as its organizing principle a returning motif, or ritornello, marked Mesto (sad). Introduced by the viola, and colored elegantly in the playing by Roger Topping, the same melodic line begins each movement, in increasingly complex variations. Finally, in the fourth movement, the theme succumbs to its melancholy and remains Mesto from then on. In between, we get an ironical Marcia, handled with requisite heaviness and musical sarcasm by the quartet, and a tongue-in-cheek Burletta (or Burlesque) in which the Takács members had great fun with Bartók's "special effects," the out-of-tune unisons and virtuosic bowing effects.

The Takács showed great control of colors, and an ability either to sustain a mood or leap through a quick succession of abrupt changes. This music, written sixty years ago, still speaks directly to the heart with a force undiminished by the passing years.

(For a review of the Takács performance on the previous Sunday of the other three works in the set, No. 1, 3 and 5, click on "Last Week" below).

(Benjamin Simon, violist, has been a member of the Naumburg Award-winning New World String Quartet and the Stanford Quartet. He is currently on the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley and is Asst. Director of the Crowden School of Music in Berkeley.)

©1999 Benjamin Simon, all rights reserved