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Richard Jernigan -> RE: Beethoven Quartets (Oct. 5 2013 18:16:14)
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The Budapest Quartet discs showed up yesterday--pretty promptly. I listened to Opus 59 number 1 last night. Before I discuss the music I should relate that Larisa (a native of Kiev) pointed out to me that the dedicatee Count Razumofsky, like a number of noted "Russians" was actually Ukrainian.
My recollection was generally correct, but listening to the recordings filled in some details. The quality of the redording restorations is quite good. There is a lack of spaciousness due to the fairly close microphone placement and mono recording, but this disc at least is quite clear, with no distortion or annoying noise.
After the music on the disc there is an interview with Alexander Schneider, the 2nd violin. He points out that although all four of them were Russsian, they were educated in Germany. He says their world was Schoenberg, Webern, Stravinsky, the pianists Schnabel and Huberman, etc.
The Budapest playing is much as I remembered it, two generations removed from the Mirós I heard last month. The intervening American generation were the Emersons and the Juilliards. In Europe there was more diversity among the intervening ensembles, ranging from the Quartetto Italiano to the Takács to the Lindsays.
In America the playing has steadily become more dynamic. The Mirós get louder than I remember the Budapest in person. The Mirós accents are stronger, their crescendos steeper, their attacks are sometimes violent, in fortissimos they regularly drive the sound into overplaying the ability of the instruments to sound coherently musical--I don't know the string players' term for it. On winds we would call it overblowing.
The Mirós agogic accents are much stronger--that slight pause before landing on a cadence is greater for them than for the Budapests.
When I first heard the Mirós a couple of years ago, I was slightly put off by their extreme vigor, though it is the logical next step after the Emersons and the Juilliards. But then I reflected, when Beethoven was first heard, he was heard as revolutionary. Perhaps the dynamism of the Mirós is meant to produce some of the shock that would have rocked Beethoven's first audience.
It was in Mischa's 'cello playing that I was first reminded of the singing quality of the Budapests. His quality is more vocal than his successors in the quartet playing I have heard. Then I was reminded that this same singing quality was present in the rest of the players.
The restored recording is good enough to hear the remarkable tone quality of the Budapests. It is both razor sharp and warmly beautiful. But of course, they are playing on the Stradivaris that belong to the Library of Congress. Alexander Schneider says in his interview what a privilege that was. "Already we had very good instruments, but to get to play on those, that was really something."
Few string players have perfect intonation at all times. The good ones are perfect in slow sections, and nail the important notes in fast passages. The Mirós super fast finale to Opus 59 Number 3 was breathtaking in its speed and total accuracy. In other pieces, I didn't notice the occasional tiny slip unless I was really listening for it. And of course some days they were better than others. I hasten to add, their tiny slips of intonation, generally in very fast passages, never detracted from the pleasure of listening to the Mirós. But I couldn't hear any slips at all from the Budapest, and I was listening closely. Of course, there were several recorded performances of the piece to choose from when the set of discs was assembled.
I like them both, a lot. The Mirós are virtuosos of the modern more aggressive style. The Budapests are one of the greatest quartets of recorded history. The Budapests aren´t syrupy and Romantic. They are disciplined, logical and precise, but soaringly beautiful.
Damn! Now I'm finally going to have to set up my turntable, and put on the LPs of the Busch Quartet, restored from the 78s of the earliest era of electronic recording.
If you want to know how the best Beethoven sounded in the 1940s-1950s, get one or more of the Bridge sets of the Budapests. To hear the 21st century take on him, I think the Mirós will be out with some discs before long. Either one is a transcendental experience.
RNJ
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