Comparison
recordings:
Borodin
Quartet [2004] Chandos CHAN 10191 and 10178
Végh
Quartet [1952 mono AAD] Music and Arts CD 1084 disks 3
and 4
Guarneri
Quartet [1968 ADD] BMG RCA 28765 57042 disk 4
Recently I exhausted my store of superlatives,
indeed perhaps even the language’s store of superlatives,
on the new digital Borodin Quartet complete recording of
the Beethoven series
(see review).
Now here I have a new disk in digital sound of two of Beethoven’s most popular quartets performed
by one of the most popular and acclaimed of modern British
quartets.
There is, of course, no right or wrong way to
play these quartets, at least not when we are considering
artists of this caliber. While the Borodins play with intense
concentration and drama, the Brodskys play with grace and
polish. In Quartet No. 8, the Borodin find much more to
investigate and take five and a half minutes, that is fourteen
percent, longer to play it. Considering the insanely fast
finale (allegro molto) of Quartet No. 9, a tempo
upon which everyone agrees, the Borodins are still 7 percent
longer in performing this quartet.
After repeated listening it finally dawned on
me what it is about this recording that disturbs me. If
you were unfamiliar with the Beethoven quartets and I had
just played for you some of the very last ones, and then
played this disk and told you this was op. 159, instead
of op. 59, you would find nothing here to say me wrong.
These performances represent a retrospective look by Beethoven
at his early music. Not having heard the other disks in
this series, and I assume that it is a series, I assume
that there will be a uniformity of approach to all the
quartets from the vantage point of the last quartets, a
journey viewed entirely in terms of its destination, a
sex life viewed entirely in terms of marriage and family
with no thought to all the adventures that might occur
along the way. These performances deprive Beethoven of
his adolescence.
Very specifically what I admire about the Borodin
Quartet performances is that they take each musical moment
as unique and explore it in terms of what it represents.
They utilize their familiarity with earlier and later Beethoven
quartets to evaluate that moment, not to subordinate it
to the greater whole. Thus they are able to keep from first
to last, from Op. 18 to Op. 135, a sense of progress and
exploration, the excited sense of discovery moment by moment.
Beethoven gets a chance to grow up at his own pace and
we get a chance to participate.
The second movement of the Quartet No. 9, marked Andante
con mono quasi allegretto, is one of the most remarkable
movements Beethoven ever wrote. If one is to derive an
image from the music, and one is entitled to do that
with Beethoven, especially middle period Beethoven, the
introductory cello pizzicato notes could represent
church bells. Then the upper strings come in with what
might be a distant anguished funeral song, at which the pizzicato cello
notes speed up, giving a feeling of arhythmic rapid heartbeat;
and then the tolling of the bell continues. The wrenchingly
anguished mood continues in the upper strings, the 6/8
tempo keeping a funeral march beat throughout. There
is a change to major mode, brief reflections on happier
times, then a reprise of the dirge scene. This is a moment
of intense drama, some of the most tragic music ever
written, and practically no amount of dramatic shaping
of this section is too much. There are persistent moments
of irony; they do not dissipate the tragic mood, but
propel us back into it. While Schoenberg formed most
of his esthetic from the last quartets of Beethoven, Verklaerte
Nacht springs directly from this movement of No.
9.
On the contrary, perhaps one could argue that
the drama is all in the notes and that merely playing them
off in tempo with no attempt to exaggerate the dramatic
images is what Beethoven intended, for there is a surface
integrity which would be obscured if too much attention
it paid to deeper structures. The Brodkys steam on through
keeping a silky surface. The Borodins explore the dramatic
images vividly. The Végh quartet achieves intense steely
tension while keeping all forward motion. The Guarneris
adopt a middle path using dynamics more than texture to
highlight dramatic shapes.
The Brodsky Quartet did something unusual when
in the late 1990s first violin player Michael Thomas was
replaced by Andrew Haveron — unusual in that the first
violinist is usually the director/dictator of a string
quartet. That a quartet would change first violinists and
continue without a drastic change in personality is testimony
to the collective and collaborative style of their music-making.
Michael Thomas apparently was the one who worked in close
association with Elvis Costello and collaborated with him
writing the popular songs which the quartet performed.
One commentator hilariously mistook this Michael Thomas
for the Michael Tilson Thomas who is a pianist and music
director of the San Francisco Symphony.
Of course, the Borodin Quartet has changed first
violinists three times, and in fact only the cellist has
been with the group since its founding in the late 1950s.
Paul Shoemaker
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Brodsky
Quartet: (Andrew Haveron, Ian Belton, violins; Paul Cassidy,
viola; Jacqueline Thomas, cello). 
