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Bartók, Schumann, Mozart: Takacs Quartet (Edward Dusinberre, Karóly Schranz, violins; Geraldine Walther, viola; András Fejér, cello) with Richard Stoltzman, clarinet; presented by Cal Performances, Hertz Hall, University of California at Berkeley. 15.2.2009 (HS)


No doubt it was the scheduled performance of Mozart’s iconic clarinet quintet, featuring Richard Stoltzman with the Takacs Quartet, that drew a capacity-plus crowd on a stormy Sunday afternoon concert. Hertz Hall at the University of California at Berkeley filled its 600 seats, added three rows on stage and even had a few listeners perched in the organ loft.

The performances did not disappoint, but at the end of the afternoon I was hard-put to figure out what the three elements of the program had to do with each other. Perhaps it was meant as a sampler of what the quartet is up to these days. Bartók’s String Quartet No. 2 will be among the works the quartet when it inaugurates the re-opening of Alice Tully Hall in New York’s Lincoln Center in March. They are building programming for their South Bank season in London later this spring around Schumann (culminating in a May recording of the quintet with Marc-André Hamelin, for release later this year). Hence the Schumann Quartet in A major, Op. 41 No. 3. With the redoubtable Stoltzman on the program, why not trot out the ever-popular Mozart quintet?

For me, the highlight of the afternoon came with the opening salvo, the Bartók. Takacs, though based now in America, started in Hungary, and has always shown a strong affinity for the Hungarian composer. Takacs has a way of letting Bartók’s music unfold without forcing any issues, and on Sunday it flowed with great warmth in between biting dissonances.

In the second quartet, Bartók showed early signs of the astringent sounds that would permeate the third, fourth and fifth quartets, before he returned to a more folk-like style in the sixth and final quartet. He opens with a pattern of open fourths played against augmented fourths (a tritone), gestures that serve as building blocks for the entire composition.

By never shying away from these harsh intervals, yet lavishing a warm sound on the transitions to more lyrical episodes, the Takacs found an approach so winning that it tied everything together into a coherent narrative. Bartók opens the door to this approach by resolving each movement into something pleasing to the ear—a pentatonic unison in the first, bumptious rhythms that have the last word in the middle movement, and a couple of quiet pizzicato unison notes to conclude the piece.

It’s easy for this all to come off as episodic, but not with this quartet. Each transition seemed to well up from something organic. Details emerged, coming into focus naturally. This was no rip-’em-up approach but something centered, grounded in a sort of reality so that everything made perfect sense.

As well played as the Schumann was, especially in the ease with which the individual members of the quartet tossed the line back and forth, it lacked the same coherence as the Bartók. Maybe that’s why the second movement was most effective, a theme and variations that at one point contrasts a breathless romp with a long, spacious adagio. The piece finishes strong.

Stoltzman has always been a favorite soloist for me, perhaps because of his ease in both classical and jazz idioms. He again demonstrated what a responsive musician he is in collaboration, although it took him a couple of Mozart’s movements to get in complete sync with the quartet. Balances were an issue in the first two movements, perhaps because he seemed to be having trouble maintaining that soft, airy pianissimo sound so beloved of the classical clarinet.

The opening, in which the strings play a sort of chorale and on the repeat the clarinet wells up with a quiet flourish of an arpeggio, found Stoltzman opening up into a louder sound that one usually hears. It was not beguiling, and he often chose to play other phrases so loud that they pushed the quartet’s sound into the background and made it seem weak. Unfortunately, the same thing happened in the lovely Larghetto second movement, beautiful concordances contrasting with awkwardly unbalanced phrases.

The Menuetto seemed to right the ship, finally. Getting into a nice rhythmic groove, the quintet came together into better focus. In the Allegretto finale, with its cycle of variations, Stoltzman finally found a sound that fused easily with the strings’ volume, and the results couldn’t have been more charming.

Harvey Steiman


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