This is a release that will be of interest
on several fronts. Firstly it resurrects what is claimed to
be three premiere recordings – a quartet by Boccherini, the
three Minuets by Puccini and an arrangement of a posthumous
work by Ysaye, his Paganini Variations. Secondly it showcases
the quartet organised by the much-admired violinist Lola Bobesco.
Romanian born Bobesco (née Violeta Bobescu) won the Prix
d’excellence at the Paris Conservatoire in 1935 and has been
based for much of her professional life in Belgium. The Quatuor
Arte del Suono was founded in 1991 with fellow professors at
Belgium’s Royal Academies and this recording dates from 1994.
And thirdly the music itself is never without interest.
The Boccherini is a charming four-movement
work that begins with an andante in the classical manner both
portentous and affecting. In the succeeding Allegretto the first
and second violins take turns leading, enjoying the harmonic
excursions the composer provides for them. The third movement,
most oddly, is "come prima" – that is, a repeat of
the opening andante with minimal differences, notably a two
bar descent in flats. The finale is the movement that has given
the quartet its nickname – Cornemuses or bagpipes. Humorous,
scurrying, with a securely anchored cello, the imitation bagpipes
drone in slow tempo <sample 1> adding colour and density
as well as pleasurable absurdity to the work. One of Boccherini’s
clever fake endings brings to a conclusion a charmingly amiable
work. Donizetti wrote seventeen quartets and No. 13 is an unsullied
and attractively slight work in A major. It has a graceful and
tuneful first movement with perhaps rather too much unison writing
for its own good. In the second, introduced by the second violin,
affecting and unclouded lyricism prevails whilst the notable
feature of the Minuet is the clever delayed entry of the single
voices one after the other. Lyrico-dramatic impulse drives the
finale with virtuosic duetting between violins and charmingly
songful.
Puccini’s Crisantemi was written in memory
of the Duke of Aosta in 1890. It opens harmonically and thematically
in questing spirit, is multi-sectional within its six minute
span and affectingly vocal and plangent <sample 2> without
resorting to bathos. The three Minuetti are pleasant, antique
trifles. After Eugene Ysaye’s death in 1931 the manuscript of
the Paganini Variations for violin and piano was discovered.
It was subsequently adapted for quartet by Ysaye’s grandson,
Jacques, expressly for the Quatuor Arte del Suono. It’s a theme
and thirteen variations on the famous 24th Caprice
- not top drawer Ysaye and the adaptation inevitably thins the
virtuoso line; nevertheless there is still plenty of virtuoso
rhetoric to enjoy. At one point it is distinctly reminiscent
of another adaptation, the Halvorsen-Handel Passacaglia <sample
3> and there is much scurrying up and down the fingerboard,
imitative violin trilling, a delightful all pizzicato passage
and some relaxed lyrical writing.
The Alberni Quartet has recorded the Donizetti
Quartet and the Puccini Crisantemi on CRD 3366 but, primus inter
pares or not, Bobesco and her talented colleagues have given
us a well-considered and affectionate disc.
Jonathan Woolf
Quatuor Arte del
Suono