HAYDN: String Quartet in C Major, Op. 76, No. 3 “Emperor”; String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 76, No. 4 “Sunrise”; BEETHOVEN: String Quartet in A Major, Op. 18, No. 5 – Quartetto Italiano – PentaTone

HAYDN: String Quartet in C Major, Op. 76, No. 3 “Emperor”; String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 76, No. 4 “Sunrise”; BEETHOVEN: String Quartet in A Major, Op. 18, No. 5 – Quartetto Italiano – PentaTone Multichannel SACD (RQR 4.0 Series) PTC 5186 189, 79:26 [Distr. by Naxos] *****:
The sumptuous sound may be all the reason any of us needs to secure his copy of the marvelous disc, a tribute to the Quartetto Italiano – the ensemble critic Virgil Thomson once hailed as “the finest string quartet our century has known.”
The Haydn quartets here proffered by Pentatone–licensed from January 1976 Decca quad originals–and recorded at the resonant Musica Theatre, La Chaux de Fonds, Switzerland, provide our ears with every nuance four stringed instruments can evoke when applied to the quartet medium. The cut-time second movement of the famous C Major Quartet–the so-called German National Anthem in G Major theme and variations–quite absorbs us in the definition of the theme viola Piero Farulli supplies before violin Paolo Borciani and cellist Franco Rossi each has his turn. Before the movement ends, the four instruments make a palpable move to organ sonority, a hushed antiphon of elusively mystical power. Superb attacks mark the Menuetto in C Minor, the theme only a hair’s breadth away from the Symphony No. 93 third movement. Its intimate trio in A Minor allows Elisa Pegretti to make her contribution in the second violin part felt. Bold C Minor chords open the final Presto movement, the lower strings in fiery agitation. The movement does modulate to a cheerful C Major, but not before violin Borciani has his concertante moments in exalted and explosive  polyphony with his fellows.
The Sunrise Quartet (1797) takes its designation from the startling opening to the first movement, a static foil to the marking Allegro con spirito. The first violin rises above a sea of mist in spatial harmony. The theme expands then shrinks into jagged riffs from the individual instruments, only to fill out again for expansive development. Rarely has a Haydn quartet movement so obviously exploited symphonic aspirations. The concluding four-beat motif can only hint that Beethoven well-appreciated this movement. Another hymn defines the Adagio, the harmonic invention well in advance of Romanticism, some thirty years hence. It plays like a beautifully balanced, chamber music reduction of a larger symphonic work. Rossi’s hefty cello line grounds much of the cantabile that flows high in the violin part. Hurdy-gurdy folk idiom suffuses the Menuetto, guttural and earthy in all the bubbling parts. The modality of the trio pays a debt or two in Magyar terms–that Bartok may well have acknowledged–before the striking da capo transports us once more to a happy Transylvania. Infectious grace notes swarm among the plangent harmonies of the Finale, a martial impulse which combines in typical Haydn fashion rondo and sonata-form. The “busy” nature of the coda proves a virtuosic romp for four instrumentalists of superior ilk.
The Beethoven A Major Quartet was recorded at the Salle des Ramparts, La Tour de Peilz, Switzerland in July 1973. Beethoven takes his model from Mozart’s Quartet in A, K. 464. The cello of Franco Rossi provides gives a triad that incurs a danced response and a dark episode in E Minor, Beethoven’s characteristic synthesis of opposing energies. The light touch rules in this austere yet free realization of the opening Allegro, its counterpoints a vision of instrumental clarity. By the coda, violinist Borciani could have been playing the last movement of the Mozart D Major Concerto K. 218. The staid Menuetto implies little of the dance, being rather melancholic and expressive in long lines over a pulsating or rocking bass.  Like Haydn, Beethoven uses the trio for folk purposes, a drone bass establishing the pastoral rustic tone.
The heart of the A Major Quartet--following the Mozart exemplar–lies in the theme and five variations, Andante cantabile, in two eight-bar phrases of tender mercy. The contrapuntal elements sing as well as shuffle in jaunty harmony. The latter variants employ those doubled notes that create an organ sonority within the four instruments, a somber power that often invokes the spirit of Bach. Lest we become too glum, however, Beethoven applies some burlesque humor that his mentor Haydn would well appreciate. Beethoven ends his quartet, like Mozart, alla breve, a three-tone upbeat motif in command of the developments. The foil of a chorale theme points well ahead to Beethoven’s late style. Each of the four instruments adds his distinctive voice to the mix, blended perfectly in this Vittorio Negri production, a classic in the extensive annuls of this remarkable ensemble. And sounding as up-to-date as if recorded this year.
—Gary Lemco