A fascinating experiment is now underway at Alice Tully Hall. Under the auspices of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, six different quartet groups have been enlisted to present all of Beethoven’s works for string quartet in the course of a single month. From a listener’s perspective, the point of the exercise is not to evaluate Beethoven—the vote has long been in on that one—but to observe the relative merits of each group’s handling of these ever-surprising masterpieces.
Every one of the six concerts features an early, a middle, and a late quartet (the sixteen string quartets having been bulked out to eighteen not only with a separate performance of the Grosse Fugue, which is standard, but also with a quartet version of the Opus 14, No. 1 piano sonata), so one can assume that some central adjudication took place. I don’t know exactly how much choice each ensemble had over which program it got to play; what I do know is that the order of the programs, and even the order of the pieces within each program, had been set in advance by the long-dead funders of the entire cycle. That is, what we are getting here at Lincoln Center is a version of the “Slee Cycle,” endowed in the 1950s by a Buffalo, New York couple named Frederick and Alice Slee. Their only requirement, apparently, was that the pieces be played in the same order every time—the order they themselves had set—and this is indeed how they have been played at the University of Buffalo every year since 1955.
My first surprise, at the Brentano Quartet’s opening-night performance on February 5th, was to discover that we were going to hear Opus 127 first. This late quartet in E-flat major would be the gem of any evening’s program (some might even consider it the gem of the whole series), and it seemed a bit perverse to open with it. But the Brentanos are well-equipped to cope with the perverse, especially if it’s a choice between that and the conventional. They are probably the most blatantly virtuosic of the six excellent ensembles in the series—their first violinist, in particular, has technical skills of an incredibly high order—and the result is that their interpretations tend to be highly colored and notably theatrical.
This can be just right for certain pieces, as it was for the Razumovsky No. 3, with which the Brentanos closed their program. All three Razumovsky quartets are designed to showcase virtuosity (they were written, after all, for a show-off violinist, the Russian Count Razumovsky), and their beauty lies in their extremity: the quick changes in speed or volume, the sudden unexpected pauses, the melodic switchbacks and diversions. The Alice Tully audience roared its approval after the Brentanos’ show-stopping performance, and it became clear at that point how well-suited they were to an opening-night program that put this piece last.
But that rousing conclusion also clarified, for me, what had been wrong with their rendition of Opus 127. They had played this subtle, delicate, immensely moving quartet as if it were a Razumovsky. By exaggerating the pauses, introducing sudden dynamic shifts, and emphasizing odd notes in a given passage, they gave it a colorful theatricality that was exactly wrong for it. If you love the Opus 127 quartet, then one of the things you most love—no, let me drop this pose of benevolent authority—one of the things I most love is that cascading downward series, that waterfall of thirty-six consecutive sixteenth notes, with which Beethoven slides us into the close of the Finale. Up until then, the whole final movement has been a series of repeated but slightly varied pleasures of a reassuring, almost triumphant nature; at their culmination, which takes place just before this moment, we are lifted up to ethereal levels by the very highest, sweetest notes of the violin. And then we plunge down that cascade, and it’s as if we’re in free-fall—but the free-fall of a dream, where we are perfectly safe from harm even as we are enchanted by the thrill of flying.
In order to feel this lovely motion, or emotion, you have to sense the separate, equal weight of each one of those sixteenth notes. And that is what the Brentanos deprived us of. They played the whole sequence in a terrible rush, as if it were a flourish or a trill—as if speed itself were a virtue. It can be a virtue, and when it is, the Brentanos are the best in the game at it. But on Opus 127, it was a mistake.
Perhaps this explains why I found the second concert in the series, the February 7th performance by the Daedalus Quartet, so calmly satisfying. As they progressed through their more sensibly arranged program, the Daedalus players just got better and better. They were strong, if a bit rough at times, in the “Harp” quartet, with which they opened; they performed Opus 18, No. 2 with consummate skill; and their rendering of the late, great Opus 131 was stupendous. This astonishing C-sharp minor quartet is the one that many people—myself, I suppose, included—would consider the pinnacle of the whole series, and the Daedalus Quartet did it full justice. The four players disappeared into the music: we could practically see the work’s complicated structure taking place before our very eyes, and the emphatic, repeated chords that swept us movingly through the final Allegro were done with both verve and stateliness. This was ensemble playing at its best, and Beethoven at hisbest.
The CMSLC Beethoven series continues through February, and audiences in the New York area have four more opportunities to hear a range of fine players: the Borromeo Quartet on February 9th, the Pacifica Quartet on February 19th, the St. Lawrence String Quartet on February 21st, and the Miró Quartet on February 23rd. Those of you who already know the quartets well and cherish your favorite recordings can indulge, if you wish, in this entertaining game of comparisons. And those who are new to the Beethoven string quartets can have something even better: the irreplaceable thrill of first hearing these grand masterpieces played live.
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Since I am writing for the first time about concerts in the recently renovated Alice Tully Hall, I should say a word about the remodeling, which was completed almost exactly a year ago. In a word: it’s terrific. Inside the auditorium, the whole atmosphere is warm and gently enveloping, from the LED lights that glow softly behind the rich-hued wood to the flexible-sized stage, which can alternately extend out into the audience or retract to a narrower strip. In the orchestra section, there are now no bad seats: the graciously wide passages that separated the rows are still there, the acoustical dead spots have been eliminated, and the sightlines are great all the way to the back. I am less enthusiastic about the balcony seats—they feel a bit like Siberia, in terms of both temperature and distance from the stage—but this problem can no doubt be partially rectified with a thermostat adjustment. Certain oddities occur here and there (one step on the orchestra’s lefthand aisle, for instance, is a fraction of an inch higher than its neighbors, so people come close to tripping when they go down it: you can hear the repeated thump if you are sitting nearby), but these flaws are minor compared to the overall success of the design. It is now the perfect setting in which to hear string quartets. And the glass-walled lobby, with its dawn-to-dusk café, is a tremendous new urban amenity. Like the wonderful High Line, which is also a Diller Scofidio + Renfro achievement, the Alice Tully café is one of those great public spaces that enhances its whole neighborhood, blending participatory street life with comfortable seclusion in a way that no one could have predicted until it was an accomplished fact. Bravo!
—February 8, 2010