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Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Late String Quartets: Volume 2
String Quartet in B-flat, Op.130 with original finale, Große
Fuge, Op.133 (1825) [33:12]
Alternative finale (1826) [10:48]
Cypress String Quartet - Cecily Ward, Tom Stone (violins); Ethan
Filner (viola); Jennifer Kloetzel (cello)
rec. Skywalker Sound, San Rafael, California; date not stated. Presumed
DDD.
CYPRESS PERFORMING ARTS ASSOCIATION CSQ2010 [44:00]
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Formed in 1996, the Cypress Quartet have made several recordings
on their own label and for Naxos. I had not heard them before,
but was sufficiently impressed by their performances on this
CD to want to hear them again. I’m not sure that their playing
‘question[s] conventions’ as much as the publicity material
claims, but it is certainly both technically accomplished and
sympathetic to the varying moods of the music.
The publicity material for the present recording also reminds
us how well the first volume of their Beethoven Late Quartets
series was received. I don’t think we covered that on Musicweb
International, but John Quinn, in 2003, was most appreciative
of their recording of Haydn, Ravel and Schulhoff on CSQ3275:
“In summary, this is an enjoyable disc by a fresh-sounding young
quartet from whom I hope we hear more on disc. Recommended.”
(See full review here.)
More recently, the Cypress Quartet have recorded Benjamin Lees’
String Quartets 1, 5 and 6 for Naxos (8.559628 – see review)
for Naxos and have contributed to a programme of the chamber
music of Jennifer Higdon for the same label (8.559928 – see
review).
Reviewing that earlier recording on the Cypress independent
label, JQ particularly appreciated the performers’ ebullient
high spirits in the finale of Haydn’s Quartet Op.76/5. I was
not surprised, therefore, to find their account of the fourth
movement of Op.130 especially attractive: it’s marked alla
dansa tedesca and, while a German dance may not generally
be thought of as the most lively in the world, this movement
goes with a real swing. Like most movements in Beethoven’s Late
Quartets, however, the tunefulness is only part of the story:
there’s a manic side to the music that sets it quite apart from
any German Dance that Mozart, Schubert, Lanner or the Strauss
Family might ever have written, and the Cypress Quartet captures
this side of the music, too. If they very slightly smooth out
some of the harsher contours, that’s true, too, of some of the
best recordings of this music.
The Op.130/Op.133 coupling is now pretty standard practice and,
though it makes for a slightly short recording, it makes sense
to have both the original and revised final movements on the
same CD. I prefer recordings, however, which perform the first
five movements of Op.130 and conclude with the revised 1826
finale as the default version, leaving the 1825 Große Fuge
either as a separate work or programmable as the finale.
You can, of course, programme the new recording that way, but
the disc’s default position restores the work as it was originally
composed. It’s a nuisance to have to re-programme a CD and some
of the most expensive decks don’t even allow you to do so.
Though the Borodin Quartet (Virgin) adopt the same arrangement,
with the Große Fuge followed by the 1826 finale, and
though it may be heresy to entertain the thought, I’m not sure
that public opinion in 1825/6 wasn’t right: at the first performance
the second and fourth movements were encored but the finale
was not appreciated. Though Beethoven complained that the public
were cattle and asses not to appreciate it, the original fugal
finale was (and is) very long and the Fuge stands very
well as a work in its own right. Check out the Klemperer Eroica/Große
Fuge coupling on EMI to see how well it works alone: though
I prefer his mono Eroica to the stereo remake with that
coupling, the later version is still one of my Desert Island
discs.
The Cypress Quartet timing of 15:15 is relatively fast for my
liking – the Quartetto Italiano (Philips), whose version was
my introduction to the work, take 18:53. The Cypress tempo works
well, though, and is not too far from the consensus: the Amadeus
Quartet take 15:25, the Alban Berg Quartet (EMI) 15:31, the
Borodin Quartet (Virgin) 15:47. The Lindsays (ASV) and the Emerson
Quartet (DG) are faster at 15:02 and 14:41 respectively and
the highly respected Takacs Quartet version (Decca) fastest
of all at 14:28.
Whatever I think of the arrangement of making the Fuge
the default finale, the Cypress Quartet give an excellent performance,
so good, in fact, that it seems almost a sacrilege to play track
7 with what the notes call the ‘alternate’ finale immediately
afterwards. (When will our transatlantic cousins learn the difference
between ‘alternate’, one after the other, and ‘alternative’,
one instead of the other: having taught English 101 to undergrads
in the US system, I know what a high standard of English is
required of them, much higher than in the UK, but this is one
distinction that they really ought to get right.) Whichever
way you programme the CD, however, the Cypress Quartet’s relatively
unhurried version of the revised finale works very well. On
paper, they look slow at over a minute longer than the Lindsays
and the Takács Quartet, but their performance is never allowed
to drag.
The recording is very good, though it may be slightly too forward
for some listeners. It reminds me of the presence which CBS
afforded to their stereo remake of the Budapest Quartet’s versions
of these late quartets, recently reissued on an 8 CD set (Sony
88697776782). The notes, which are contained on three sides
of the gatefold cover, are rather short but may well be all
that even the beginner needs.
This CD now joins the very best recordings of two works which
stand at the spiritual height of the chamber music repertoire,
rivalled only by Schubert’s String Quintet in C. If the
Cypress String Quartet smoothes over some of the music’s rougher
contours slightly, the gain in their expression of the music’s
inner strengths amply compensates. Not all UK dealers seem to
sell this recording, but if you’re finding it hard to obtain
(and live in the UK), Amazon.co.uk also have it as a download
– here
– at £5.53.
Brian Wilson
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