There have been three Juilliard cycles of the Bartók Quartets.
The most recent dates from 1981, the most international in its
appeal was from 1963 – by which time only two of the original
members remained - and the first set was recorded in 1950. In
that year the Juilliard was a youthful quartet which had only
been formed four years before, at the instigation of William
Schuman. Robert Mann and Robert Koff were the violinists, Raphael
Hillyer the violist and Arthur Winograd was the cellist – all
Juilliard faculty members. These Bartók recordings were made
not on tape but on large acetate discs.
The Juilliard had given the first public American cycle of the
quartets in New York during February and March 1949. Columbia’s
chief, Goddard Lieberson, duly signed them up to make an integral
set of the Bartók quartets – adding for good measure the Schoenberg
Quartets amongst a number of prestigious recordings in the years
that followed. The recordings were issued on six 78rpm sets
in 1951 and the Pearl reissue [GEMS0147] was apparently their
first CD incarnation. They were not by any means the first performances
of individual quartets – No 1 had been recorded by the Pro Arte,
No 2 by the Amar-Hindemith and the Budapest Quartets, No 3 made
an early LP appearance courtesy of the New Music Quartet, the
splendid Guilet Quartet essayed No 4 whilst the Hungarians were
back for Nos 5 and 6 – and in the case of the last quartet the
Gertler Quartet set down a recording for Decca and the Erling
Bloch did likewise for HMV.
But this was nevertheless the first complete cycle and a dramatically
auspicious start to the Juilliard’s long career. All the performances
are fully engaged and involved and small technical or rhythmic
incongruities are of very little account in the face of such
committed and often revelatory playing. The earlier incarnation
of the Juilliard lacked the tonal finesse that increased with
experience – and cellist Arthur Winograd was a noticeably less
suave performer than Claus Adam who succeeded him, though that’s
not always to Adam’s advantage in this of all repertoire. The
pleasures of the early set are however legion. Winograd’s ardent
expressivity courses through the first movement of No 1 – not
over vibrated and with a rapt intensity. The Allegretto is illuminated
by deliciously swaying rhythmic impetus and the finale is well
controlled, with both violinists varying tonal production to
real musical advantage. In the Second Quartet the Juilliard
manage to integrate the much slower, more ruminative central
panel of the first movement with judicious imagination. In the
second movement there is no etiolation – they mine the mordant,
hothouse atmosphere with impeccable logic and the finale is
similarly sensitive.
The Third Quartet of 1927 with its disparities and disjunctions
of tone and dynamics receives an excellent traversal though
one perhaps not optimally adjusted to the vertiginous heights
and depths of the work. Still this is an outstanding performance
on its own terms, the high point of which is the second movement
– strongly accented, the folk inflections integrated, sensible
dynamics, resilient and determined music making, ironclad in
rhythm, impressive in stature. The Fourth Quartet was the one
famously criticised by Shostakovich; the Juilliard meets its
exceptional challenges head on. Very occasionally one feels
that the Juilliard hadn’t quite reconciled itself to some of
the more problematic aspects of the writing and were consequently
less propulsive than they might be – but this is a small quibble.
They are more than adequately sensitive in the final movement
Non troppo lento.
The Fifth features a most exactingly beautiful slow movement,
one to which the Juilliard brings tremendous reserves of sustaining
and luminous power; the interiority of the movement is delineated
with unerring rightness; listen to the way Hillyer’s viola steals
into the texture as one small but singular example of the finesse
and acute ear for balance that all these performances possess.
Equally the fresh air convulsiveness of the finale is intoxicating
– vividly played, humorously inflected, triumphantly concluded.
The Sixth Quartet receives a performance that teems with passionate
declamation. Now driving and intense, now affecting and lyrical,
the Juilliard retain equipoise and a balance between the polar
oppositions of the work that only strengthens and deepens its
profile. This is not immaculate playing, the tone does roughen
and occasionally coarsen but this is playing that exists through
and above such considerations; playing of immediacy and conviction,
of a rare imaginative understanding.
The transfers are excellent. The performances are, obviously,
outstanding. Whichever cycle you possess, whether by the Juiliard
or by other Quartets - more recently the Takacs and Vegh come
to mind - this first cycle will remain of prime importance in
the discography of the Bartók Quartets.
All of which leaves the reviewer with a dilemma regarding the
Schoenberg Quartets and the Berg and Webern that make up the
remainder of the set. The dilemma is occasioned by how much
one needs to write on their excellence, given that major interest
in this box will, I suspect, centre on the Bartók works. The
Kolisch cycle of Schoenberg Quartets had been recorded in the
1930s and is available on CD. This was the group to whom Bartók
dedicated his Sixth and final quartet in 1941. It’s also the
group that shared Schoenberg’s most intimate instructions regarding
his music’s directions and despite the occasional asperity of
the collective sound, in many ways their trailblazing 78 recordings
remain unequalled in all except sonic matters and sheer technical
virtuosity.
The Juilliard recordings were made around the time of Schoenberg’s
death. The first sessions were on 3 and 8 May 1951, the series
continuing until July 1952. The album set of LPs was released
in December 1953. Its impact was hardly seismic – the repertoire,
despite the ‘attractive’ and tonal early Op.7 was hardly congenial.
But it certainly made its mark in specialist quarters, and was
immediately acknowledged as a significant monument to the performance
of Schoenberg on disc. Throughout the set ensembles lapses are
remarkably few and none detract from the musical argument in
the slightest. Perhaps the most sheerly impressive performances
are those of the Second and Fourth Quartets. These face Schoenbergian
dilemmas head on and with huge commitment, not least from Uta
Graf in the singing of Stefan George’s texts, and in the Fourth
they nail Schoenberg’s late style perfectly.
Don’t forget either that members of the 1960s group made the
first recording of Schoenberg’s String Trio and, with a changed
line up, they returned to it again in 1985. That much later
disc also contained Verklärte Nacht with the addition
of Walter Trampler and Yo-Yo Ma.
Nor, too, should one bypass the sixth disc in West Hill’s collection,
which contains the 1950 recording of Berg’s Lyric Suite, and
the 1952 disc of Webern’s Five Movements for String Quartet
and the String Quartet Op. 3. These are also profoundly important
documents, played with the expected intellectual and digital
command that the group so imposingly possessed.
There is a good booklet with details about the works and the
Juilliard – though there’s a rogue page about a work that doesn’t
appear. The transfer engineers divide responsibilities: Lani
Spahr and Philippe Devereux take three CDs each, and Spahr’s
work on the Bartók quartets has certainly managed to smooth
out the occasional problems that marred the Pearl transfers.
Let me finally note that the six CDs are priced as three.
Jonathan Woolf
Track listing
CD 1
Béla BARTÓK (1881-1945)
String Quartet No.1 in A minor, Sz40, BB52 Op.7 (1909) [31:15]
String Quartet No.2 in A minor, Sz67 BB75 Op.17 (1915-17) [29:51]
CD 2
String Quartet No.3 Sz85 BB93 (1926) [15:10]
String Quartet No.4 in C major, SZ91 BB93 (1927) [23:08]
CD 3
String Quartet No.5 in B flat major, Sz102 BB110 (1934) [30:09]
String Quartet No.6 in D major, Sz114 BB119 (1939) [28:50]
CD 4
Arnold SCHOENBERG (1874-1951)
String Quartet No.1 in D minor Op.7 (1905) [42:16]
String Quartet No.2 in F sharp minor Op.10 with Uta Graf (soprano)
(1908) [28:36]
CD 5
String Quartet No.3 Op.30 (1927) [29:05]
String Quartet No.4 Op.37 (1936) [30:57]
CD 6
Alban BERG (1885-1935)
Lyric Suite (1926) [28:20]
String Quartet Op.3 (1910) [19:54]
Anton WEBERN (1883-1945)
Five Movements for String Quartet Op.5 [10:48]
Juilliard Quartet