Surprisingly (for it seems so against the odds) these have been good — even great — times for that apparently most elitist medium, the string quartet.
Surprisingly (for it seems so against the odds) these have been good — even great — times for that apparently most elitist medium, the string quartet. Longer-established groups have flourished and matured alongside the emergence of plentiful younger ones, sometimes of outstanding calibre. The inexhaustible extent of this incomparable repertoire has been, and continues to be, marvellously served by its current exponents.
Among whom the Endellion, just embarking on their 30th anniversary season, are not least. They cover the whole classic range from Haydn to Bartók, with liberal representation of recent and new works, with equal stylishness, energy, accomplishment: no eccentricities — a mainstream/bread-of-life presentation, obtruding nothing between the music and its realisation.
As their handsome new box of the totally complete Beethoven output for four and five string-players attests. The ten CDs contain, as well as the canonical 17 works for quartet and the one original quintet, a couple of sizeable transcriptions from the master’s hand, and some absorbing miniatures, or fragments from his workshop floor, scarcely known save to specialists (one only came to light in 1999) for both groupings. There is an example of workmanship at full length; the composer’s earliest (1799) and final (two years on) version of the first in his first published quartet-set, op. 18: an object-lesson, in terms of the musical substance itself, of how self-critical scrutiny isn’t satisfied with the already pretty good, but must always up the stakes.
The same goes for a more modest enterprise, transforming a very early wind octet into a string quintet (with extra viola): no masterpiece, yet a work of charm and invention, adroitly improved in every aspect by the rewrite — more elegant and expert, and running to generosity in a newly composed second trio to its minuet. This serenade-like piece succeeds better, to my ears, than the unique instance in Beethoven’s oeuvre of an original two-viola quintet. If there were indeed one such to place somewhere near Mozart’s supreme contributions to the same genre, lovers of chamber-music would clamour to hear it; but Beethoven’s seems bland and tame for all its size: even while marking an advance upon the six op. 18 quartets that immediately precede it, it is far less distinctive and memorable — every time I hear it I forget it forthwith! The other transcription, from an early piano sonata (no.9) to quartet, detracts from the satisfying original, though the composer evidently undertook the job with care for texture, voicing, balance, as well as for the money.
From the first notes of the strong calm theme that launches the first of the three quartets op. 59 (known as the ‘Razumovsky Quartets’ for their aristocratic Russian dedicatee, hailed too by the presence of several of his native folktunes) memorability is paramount! These compelling, masterful works, most especially no. 1, make a parallel explosion into the medium that the Eroica does into the symphony. The Endellion are at their very best in this wonderfully forthright music, and in the two isolated quartets that follow, the lyrically limpid ‘Harp’ op. 74 and the taut, powerfully-searching ‘serioso’ op. 95. Something about these five works’ open nature and directness of expression makes, for me, a more perfect match than they celebrate with the protean, fissured, exalted, straining hyperworld of the four mighty pieces that form ‘Beethoven’s Late Quartets’.
Maybe no one ensemble can encompass and make a whole from the crazy disparity of op. 130 with its bursting stop/start first movement, its silly little German dance-number, the Cav(atina) with its Pag(liacci) sobs, the wild volcanic turbulence of the concluding fugue (to which the Endellions add, after a suitably awed pause, the palliating substitute finale added by way of response to unjustified criticism). The almost as extreme mood-texture-quality-swings of op. 132 also find the players not equally always at home. Whereas the two late quartets of equipoise and integration — the ultimate classical four-movement op. 127, and the ultra-classical/transcending/reversing op. 131 — suit them from start to finish: most particularly in the variation-sets around which each of these sublime masterpieces centres. Then in the neo-classical return of the last of all, op.135, right back, via op. 18, to the source in Haydn of Beethoven’s astonishing journey, they are at their best in every respect. The elusiveness of this ostensibly light piece (even the ‘heavy question’ posed in the finale — ‘must it be?’ and the soul-shrugging answer ‘it must be!’ — proves nothing more than the composer’s private joke; involving payment, of course) is perfectly caught.
So to the fragments and miniatures: a dance, a lyric, exercises in fugue, sometimes with a prelude affixed, and one prelude, alas incomplete, suggesting greater things, calling out for sympathetic ‘rendering’, or ‘elaboration’, or at the least encasing in an homage. All have their interest as tiny splinters from the great mind and spirit who conceived, then brought to fulfilment, the canonical 17. They round off this endeavour, as admirable for its fidelity and distinction as for its completeness.
Beethoven: Complete String Quartets, Fragments and Quintets, played by the Endellion Quartet + extra viola, is available on ten CDs from Warner Classics. The Endellions will be premièring Robin Holloway’s 6 Quartettino throughout their season in Cambridge marking the University’s 800th anniversary.
Comments