Comparison recordings of these quartets:
Guarneri Quartet [late 1960s ADD] RCA/BMG
82876-55704-2
Vegh Quartet [1952 monophonic AAD] Music
& Arts CD-1084
Hollywood String Quartet [1958 monophonic
ADD] Testament SBT 3082
Opus 132, Alban Berg Quartet EMI 7243
5 69793 2 1
These last quartets
of Beethoven are among his very greatest
and most influential works, written
when he was stone deaf. His recovery
from a bout of serious illness in May
of 1825 gave rise to the deeply-felt
slow movement of the Fifteenth Quartet,
which Beethoven called "Holy song
of thanks (‘Heiliger dankgesang’) to
the divinity, from one made well."
But his liver cirrhosis soon again became
acute. The Sixteenth Quartet was the
last complete work he wrote, although
after that in December 1826 he wrote
a new final movement to the thirteenth
quartet to replace the Grosse Fuge.
He lay on a filthy mattress saturated
with vomit, diarrhoea, and the copious
exudate from his suppurating liver,
and out of this hell of stink came this
charming, delightful music - Op. 135.
People who loved him came to help him,
pilgrims came to touch the expiring
saint of music. He died on 24 March
1826.
The late quartets were
rarely performed during his life and
even for some time thereafter. It wasn’t
until Schoenberg’s exploration of atonality
that the full harmonic implications
of these magnificent works were significantly
demonstrated.
When I first saw this
recording I assumed it was one of the
Chandos Historical series from the Soviet
Union, but, no, these are brand new
recordings by the venerable and still
active Borodin quartet. Only the cellist,
Valentin Berlinsky has been with the
group since the earliest days in the
1950s, and violinist Abramenkov is the
only other hold-over from the group’s
magnificent Haydn Seven Last Words
or their fine 1980s second recorded
traversal of the Shostakovich Quartets.
Aharonian and Naidin are new to my experience.
The good news is that the Borodin Quartet,
with half new personnel, at the very
least is still everything it ever was.
This is the first complete Beethoven
cycle this group has ever recorded,
although they played Beethoven quartets
before, albeit rarely.
The Hollywood String
Quartet make these quartets sound so
beautiful, perhaps more beautiful than
they should sound. The (first) Vegh
performance on the other hand is possessed
of a raw, gripping, wiry energy. The
Guarneri play with wide dynamics, romance
and passion. The Alban Berg quartet
achieve in No. 15 an awesome intellectual
monumentality.
These Borodin Quartet
performances are more relaxed and very
dramatic. Tragic sections become sadly
wistful. Lyric sections are very lyric.
Ironic sections become playful; the
vivace in Op. 135 has never sounded
so fleetingly light. Vigorous sections
become rollickingly joyful. As in their
Shostakovich cycle, if a passage can
be interpreted as having a dance rhythm,
it is boldly so interpreted, and as
a result these performances are more
energetic, extroverted and optimistic
than any I’ve ever heard. Throughout
there is a sense of close ensemble,
an intense desire to find and communicate
humour and joy which can in other hands
sound excessively — even monotonously
— gloomy. Perhaps this would not be
so remarkable in, for instance, the
Op. 18 quartets, which I have not heard
these artists perform. Recorded sound
is excellent, clear, close and realistic.
Again, these are not Soviet recordings.
The Beethoven quartets
are so varied in mood and structure
that hearing a fine performance of these
two says little if anything about how
the other quartets would be played.
I hope very much to hear this whole
set soon, but, in the meantime, buy
the other volumes in this series at
your own risk.
Paul Shoemaker
Borodin Quartet (2005): (Ruben Aharonian,
Andrei Abramenkov, vv; Igor Naidin, vla; Valentin
Berlinsky, vc) 
