Recorded 22-25 May 2006 at the St. George’s, Brandon Hill, Bristol, this superb pair of readings by the Takacs Quartet is no less an audiophile’s delight, enjoying quite definite separation of the individual parts between the two channels, a real antiphon of impassioned voices for the opening of the Death and the Maiden Quartet. The edgy tension in the viola and cello parts simmers with an elan vital of palpable agony. The triplet figures want to relax, but a cantering sense of mortality pervades every bar, the two violins at odds to gain ascendancy. The urgency at the top register finds a sinking despair in the bass line, Andras Fejer’s cello a surgical saw to remove your heart. The slow movement’s variations move from a bleak opening statement to even sparer hopes when the variants move into the major key. The first variation with solo violin Edward Dusinberre’s flourishes over a palpitating bass line could melt glaciers in Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell. The muscular Scherzo has the cello and viola’s pummeling us from deep sonic separation in the voices. Only the middle section emanates anything like countrified serenity, Schubert’s quoting one of his own laendler whose triplets remind us of the Great C Major Symphony. The unrepentant da capo punishes us with its rasping, wicked scythes. Finally, a somber tarantella, a totentanz of persuasive, grotesque beauty. Jabbing agogics and seductive, serpentine rills pass through our consciousness, not far from the allure of Der Erlkoenig’s song to the hapless youth.
The A Minor Quartet possesses one of the most intimate, mystical openings in chamber
music literature. Each movement begins with a pianissimo of utmost delicacy. To say that the Takacs plays with haunted melancholy is to understate the eerie haze that surrounds much of this exquisite score. The B-flat Rosamunde theme gains symphonic–perhaps “organ sonority” would be a more apt analogy–proportions in the course of a tenderly lyrical series of transpositions. Some of the rapid passagework shows off the Takacs as a bravura ensemble, especially in the detache applications of the bow. The cantering Menuetto seems to take its cue from one of Beethoven’s late quartets, likely the A Minor, Op. 132. The deep cello line, answered by the middle strings, never cavorts with any real joy, only that weaving laugh which smiles no more. The Takacs bestows a gentle lilt to the final Allegro moderato, a kind of Hungarian gypsy dance in which the strings pair off in martial interchanges. Some concertante figures from Dusinberre find persuasive answers from viola Geraldine Walther. Fejer’s cello catches the grace notes for the repetitions after the mid-point. The music swells to a heated march before fading away prior to the last, insistent chords that provide the finishing touches upon a well-wrought urn.
–Gary Lemco
