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Beethoven: The Early String Quartets / Budapest String Quartet
Bridge Records

Beethoven: The Early String Quartets / Budapest String Quartet

$18.99 Only 1 left

Details

Composer
BEETHOVEN, LUDWIG VAN
Artist
BUDAPEST STRING QUARTET
Format
CD
Label
Bridge Records
Released
Sep 13, 2011
Catalog #
BCD9342A/B
UPC
090404934223

About



BEETHOVEN String Quartets, op. 18/1–6 • Budapest Qrt • BRIDGE 9342/AC (2 CDs: 135:18.


This set completes Bridge’s offering, in three installments, of a complete live Beethoven cycle by the Budapest Quartet, drawn from concerts at the Library of Congress over the period of its long residency there, from the war years to the early ’60s.


As a fixture of the American musical scene in the mid 20th century, the Budapest Quartet was in many ways the chamber-music equivalent of what Toscanini and the NBC Symphony represented on the orchestral scene: a similar “high Modernist” approach of score-based rigor, with virtuoso execution characterized by tonal luster, rhythmic brio, and expressive intensity. Although the sound and interpretations are familiar from the quartet’s studio recordings from the 1930s (CDs on Biddulph) and early and late 1950s (mono cycle on United Archives, stereo remakes recently collected in a bargain box in Sony’s Masters series), these live versions consistently score in their extra keenness, freshness, and the kind of spontaneous risk-taking only possible at a live event.


Quartets Nos. 1–3 are taken from concerts in 1944, with Edgar Ortenberg on second violin (the notes inform us that No. 3, from March 9 of that year, was actually his debut appearance with the group); No. 5 dates from a year earlier, when Alexander Schneider still occupied that seat. First movements are tightly coiled, with perfectly balanced tonal weight, knife-edge attack, and a wonderfully supple molding of the themes within a rigorously classical conception of unified tempo. (Exposition repeats are consistently omitted throughout.) Slow movements have great expressive immediacy, luxuriant tonal fullness, and often a penchant for dynamic and articulative extremes—for two examples, hear first violin Joseph Roisman’s breathtaking emergence from inaudibility in the messa di voce beginning of his melody in the Adagio of No. 1, and the radiant textural saturation the group achieves in the last variation of the Andante cantabile from No. 5. Scherzos leap off the page with rapier-like cut and thrust; finales are forcefully projected with trenchant, weighty brilliance (No. 1), blistering brio (No. 2), and mercurial group reflexes at an extreme tempo (No. 3).


Two late performances (No. 4 from 1962, No. 6 from 1960) undeniably display evidence of a collective hardening of the arteries, with thicker sonorities, less responsive interplay, and some moments of less than perfect tuning (though these should not be exaggerated). Even so, there is ample compensation in a lifetime’s accumulated interpretive wisdom, with a dramatic and emotional engagement that remains highly compelling—in No. 4 in C Minor, hear the richly affecting consolation they draw from the first movement’s contrasting major-mode theme, or their highly original conception of the third movement’s Trio, with a long-breathed gradual acceleration.


The sound is close-miked and clear, vividly transferred at a high level. There is some distortion in the loudest passages from the 1940s recordings, though this will present no obstacle to the set’s obvious target audience of historic collectors.


As a bonus we have a nine-minute rehearsal fragment from 1944, a fascinating glimpse of the quartet at work on the exposition of the E-Major Molto Adagio from the Second (E-Minor) “Razoumovsky” Quartet. There is a lively back-and-forth (in Russian—naturally—with no translation provided), with painstaking attention (as one would expect) to tuning and rhythmic control, and the vivid sense of an interpretation being hammered out among four strong-willed individuals. The atmosphere is highly concentrated, with no hint of comfortable routine.


Besides being a mandatory purchase for those collecting the cycle, this set will be self-recommending to chamber-music aficionados and historic collectors generally.


FANFARE: Boyd Pomeroy

Tracklist 25 tracks

  1. Disc 1
  2. 1 I. Allegro con brio 07:07
    Track
    1
    Title
    I. Allegro con brio
    Duration
    07:07
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  3. 2 II. Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato 10:53
    Track
    2
    Title
    II. Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato
    Duration
    10:53
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  4. 3 III. Scherzo: Allegro molto 03:12
    Track
    3
    Title
    III. Scherzo: Allegro molto
    Duration
    03:12
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  5. 4 IV. Allegro 06:30
    Track
    4
    Title
    IV. Allegro
    Duration
    06:30
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  6. 5 I. Allegro 05:16
    Track
    5
    Title
    I. Allegro
    Duration
    05:16
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  7. 6 II. Adagio cantabile 06:03
    Track
    6
    Title
    II. Adagio cantabile
    Duration
    06:03
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  8. 7 III. Scherzo: Allegro 03:49
    Track
    7
    Title
    III. Scherzo: Allegro
    Duration
    03:49
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  9. 8 IV. Allegro molto, quasi presto 04:58
    Track
    8
    Title
    IV. Allegro molto, quasi presto
    Duration
    04:58
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  10. 9 I. Allegro 05:14
    Track
    9
    Title
    I. Allegro
    Duration
    05:14
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  11. 10 II. Andante con moto 07:22
    Track
    10
    Title
    II. Andante con moto
    Duration
    07:22
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  12. 11 III. Allegro 02:37
    Track
    11
    Title
    III. Allegro
    Duration
    02:37
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  13. 12 IV. Presto 03:59
    Track
    12
    Title
    IV. Presto
    Duration
    03:59
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  14. Disc 2
  15. 1 I. Allegro ma non tanto 06:54
    Track
    1
    Title
    I. Allegro ma non tanto
    Duration
    06:54
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  16. 2 II. Scherzo: Andante scherzoso quasi allegretto 05:39
    Track
    2
    Title
    II. Scherzo: Andante scherzoso quasi allegretto
    Duration
    05:39
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  17. 3 III. Menuetto: Allegro - Trio 04:26
    Track
    3
    Title
    III. Menuetto: Allegro - Trio
    Duration
    04:26
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  18. 4 IV. Allegretto - Prestissimo 04:25
    Track
    4
    Title
    IV. Allegretto - Prestissimo
    Duration
    04:25
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  19. 5 I. Allegro 04:35
    Track
    5
    Title
    I. Allegro
    Duration
    04:35
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  20. 6 II. Menuetto 04:51
    Track
    6
    Title
    II. Menuetto
    Duration
    04:51
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  21. 7 III. Andante cantabile - Poco adagio 08:42
    Track
    7
    Title
    III. Andante cantabile - Poco adagio
    Duration
    08:42
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  22. 8 IV. Allegro 04:27
    Track
    8
    Title
    IV. Allegro
    Duration
    04:27
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  23. 9 I. Allegro con brio 04:55
    Track
    9
    Title
    I. Allegro con brio
    Duration
    04:55
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  24. 10 II. Adagio ma non troppo 06:57
    Track
    10
    Title
    II. Adagio ma non troppo
    Duration
    06:57
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  25. 11 III. Scherzo: Allegro 03:16
    Track
    11
    Title
    III. Scherzo: Allegro
    Duration
    03:16
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  26. 12 IV. La Malinconia: Adagio - Allegretto quasi allegro 08:59
    Track
    12
    Title
    IV. La Malinconia: Adagio - Allegretto quasi allegro
    Duration
    08:59
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet
  27. 13 String Quartet, (Edgar Ortenberg, violin 2) (rehearsal excerpt) 09:21
    Track
    13
    Title
    String Quartet, (Edgar Ortenberg, violin 2) (rehearsal excerpt)
    Duration
    09:21
    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Ensemble
    Budapest String Quartet