It’s good
to see that the Brandis Quartet’s Schubert
(ex-Nimbus) is once more available,
scooped up by the alert Brilliant Classics
team. Housed in a two CD box set it
makes for thoroughly engaged and attractive
listening: technically and instrumentally
operating on a high level of eloquence
and managing to find convincing solutions
to myriad and complex interpretative
issues. The care over corporate dynamics
is heard as early as the Allegro ma
non troppo of the A minor and the warmth
they cultivate, at acutely judged tempi
can be heard in the same quartet’s finale.
Of especial interest is the palpable
concern they evince for properly projecting
inner voicings. All too frequently the
viola part and the running passages
of, say, the first movement of Death
and the Maiden are obliterated by
a torrent of heavily bowed power. Here
however details register with clarity
– those propulsive, tensile passages
that animate this movement are perfectly
audible.
The fluency and technical
address are certainly formidable here
and throughout – sample the slow section
of the Allegro of the G minor Quartet
with its interiorised playing and light,
wristy bowing. Or the way the quartet
deal with the demands of the slow movement,
a difficult one successfully to cohere,
not forgetting the delightful way they
have with the trio of the Scherzo. But
I do have reservations and these centre
principally on a certain lack of passion.
It would not be fair to characterise
the performances either as urbane or
as aloof – not at all – but their clarity
and precision argue for a more reserved
and less intimately visceral Schubert.
Their scrupulousness in the finale of
Death and the Maiden tends to
diffuse the work’s grandeur and the
classicist direction they take in the
slow movement can also act against the
full implications of the writing. Certainly
many will admire this restraint; others
may well find it rather too short of
fire.
The recordings do tend
to spread slightly, though not disastrously.
There is an unwelcome degree of lower
string cello boom that’s clearly not
Wolfgang Boettcher’s fault. Otherwise
this is a good recommendation for those
wanting a dignified, not cold, but relatively
cool set of these works.
Jonathan Woolf
Quartettsatz in C minor D703 
