|
CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW
April 3, 2005
|
By Michelle Dulak Thomson
How do string quartets become internationally famous? Short answers: they win competitions; they wangle "major-label" contracts; they tour a lot; they go "crossover" in one way or another. Once established better, they change personnel just enough to stay constantly in the classical-music news; or, to the contrary, never change personnel at all, which oddly enough has the same effect — something like the late Pope's long tenure, or that of the current makeup of the Supreme Court. I approached the Takács Quartet's all-Beethoven recital Sunday with all this in mind and no little trepidation.
I hadn't heard the Takács live for a long time — very nearly since they'd stopped recording for Hungaroton and started
for Decca (="London" for Americans in those days). Certainly there was all manner of buzz, not least because perhaps the best-known
string player in the San Francisco Symphony, violist Geraldine Walther, is joining the Takács when current violist Roger
Tapping retires. Walther, with close to thirty years in the Symphony viola section (most leading it), might be thought to have
found a home there; but hearing the current incarnation of the Takács, I find no difficulty at all imagining why she might
want to make the move.
 It's not just that Tapping's sound is uncannily like her own: resonant, sweet, and powerful, but with no strain in it and none of the trying-too-hard-violist's "woo-woo." It's that the rest of the quartet plays likewise. There's sweetness, there's grace; there's power, but without audible struggle; there's an uncommonly bright sound in the violins, coupled with such litheness and gentleness of manner as to be disconcerting.
Was it by accident or by design that the three most intricate of Beethoven's quartet scherzos ended up on the same program? The one in Op. 18/6 was zippy and well-honed, with a brilliant trio from first violinist Dusinberre; the one in Op. 59/1 was a real tour de force of not-overdoing-it, just getting the notes of that bizzarie in there in good order, not expressing the turmoil of the piece so literally that it blew right into the performance. And the one in Op. 135 was just brilliant: meticulously controlled in the outer sections, then apparently giddy in the Trio, until it gets "stuck" and the first violinist spends about a minute bouncing (metaphorically) violently into the air. I think I could swear that the maniacally-sawing Dusinberre was having a blast, though. Why not, with such a trampoline? At the other end of the expressive scale were the slow movements. Op. 18/6's rather frilly one (marked in 2/4, but you play it in 4/8 or not at all) was gracious and decorous. The third movement of Op. 59/1 was considerably more than that. I've heard performance that stressed naked grief more, but there are kinds of grief where no one cries out loudly, and that was what lived here, in quiet lines sung as though privately. And the Op. 135 slow movement was beyond grief, so serene and so, as it were, easeful. I've heard many other performance of this movement. All either exhibited their imperfections as badges of sincerity, or else paraded their perfections as badges of merit. This performance didn't do either. It was remote, inward, not apparently interested in exhibiting itself, but only in following the unpredictable stream of the music. It was also blended and controlled to a level I don't think I have heard before without being intensely annoyed by it. But not here. It was altogether remarkable. As for the outer movements: well, Op. 18/6's "Malinconia" was as ill-tempered as you could want, and all the more so for not being coarse; it wasn't a growl from the quartet members that you got, but a unified howl that sounded like a very-well-drilled werewolf pack. Op. 59/1's first movement was impeccably judged, as I suppose another critic would say; the whole exposition tumbled from one theme to another right into that extraordinary development, through Beethoven's labyrinth of double fugue, out the other side, and onward. The finale of the same piece was the one partial letdown for me: I was waiting to hear all the infernal syncopations summarily nailed, and they weren't, quite.
But in Op. 135 all was again on track. That very strange first movement was allowed to be genial or mysterious bar by bar, and the "Muss es sein?" ("Must it be?") finale was perfectly gauged, with the cheerful "Es muss sein!" ("It must be!") breaking out, not into quartet-scaled mayhem, but into that sort of serene bliss that turns up so often in late Beethoven. The cello theme soon afterwards was not merely serene, but seraphic; and the quartet's escape from the oppressive "Muss es sein"? at the end, using the same theme, was perfect: so innocent, so un-arch. (One curious textual question. In all of the old editions of Op. 135, there's a rhythmic figure that comes many, many times in the first movement: 32nd-note, two 16ths, and an ending note of varying lengths. In the Takács performance, in a few places that was altered to a 32nd, a dotted 16th, another 32nd, and then a longer note. This was very deliberate, to the point that I have to assume that it was a case of the Takács' having gotten advance copies of the new critical edition. I have not heard anyone play it like that before.) If a coalition of two Hungarians and two Englishmen can do all this, and yet feel comfortable substituting an American woman for one Englishman, the nations are perhaps less far apart than we thought.
(Michelle Dulak Thomson is a violinist and violist who has written about music for Strings, Stagebill, Early Music America,
and The New York Times.)
|
