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Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Takács Quartet Members Play Together Like Single Entity
By D.S. Crafts
For the Journal
One would be very hard-pressed to find a better way to begin a chamber music festival than by hosting the world-esteemed Takács String Quartet. Based in Boulder, Colo., the Takács is a frequent visitor to New Mexico, and we are always the richer for the experience. Chamber Music Albuquerque began its June Festival last weekend at the Simms Center for the Performing Arts with the Takács in a program Friday night of Haydn, Bartok and Beethoven.
The sense of ensemble created by Takács is impeccable, yet it never becomes so homogenous as to be bland or routine. They are four individual musical personalities yet always united in a single overall vision of any piece they perform. String quartet playing doesn't get any better than this.
Haydn's String Quartet Op. 77 No. 1 was the first of a pair that comprised the last quartets the composer would complete, retaining the classic structure that he himself developed over the course of nearly 50 years.
The opening Allegro moderato, which begins with a marchlike folk theme, seemed to prance, like a thoroughbred delighted to strut his stuff. The melody is said to be an old Hungarian recruiting song called a bokazo. The Adagio, a movement of dialectical opposites from deepest devotion to tender sentimentality, was given with a terse, well-sculpted beauty of expression. The Menuetto fairly jumped with joy, as high-spirited leaps bounded from the first violin. The finale theme, another folk dance, a Croatian kolo became a witty and impeccable display of virtuosity, ending with a riot of exquisitely-shaped musical snowballs tossed about.
Composed during the First World War, Bartók's String Quartet No. 2 has never been thought a happy-sounding work. While the Takács make a most persuasive and impassioned case, many listeners still find the music overly dissonant nearly a century later. Its style derives from late Romantic chromaticism, enriched by whole-tone scales and Hungarian folk music. Written around the same time as The Wooden Prince and Bluebeard's Castle, the work is in three movements.
The invigorated rhythms of the second movement, Allegro molto capriccioso, reminds one of his Allegro barbaro for piano. The fury of the playing was indeed “barbarous,” each instrument getting the maximum of dynamic and power, especially in the Prestissimo final section. The Lento began softly in extreme dissonance from which it never really emerged except in brief climactic moments. The overall effect was to dissipate the energy of the previous movement.
Beethoven's String Quartet, Op. 59 No. 3, often called “Eroica” was the last of three quartets written for the Russian Count Rasumovsky.
The introductory Andante of the first movement seemed truly suspended in time before the vigorous announcement of main themes. There was exceptional contrast in the second movement Andante with the plaintive, even lugubrious theme over a pizzicato cello.
The Menuet served as prelude to the mighty final movement here given with remarkable drive and momentum, stretching tonal resources to their ultimate limits. Homophony (accompanied melody) mixed abundantly with polyphony (independent voices) proved no challenge whatever to these masterful players.
Chamber Music Albuquerque's June Festival continues over the next two weekends.
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