Seen and Heard Recital
Review
Berg, Lyric Suite & Schubert,
String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, D810 “Death and the Maiden”,
Alban Berg Quartet, Queen Elizabeth Hall, 24th February, 2005
(T J-H)
It is a rare occasion indeed when the Alban Berg Quartet actually
plays a quartet by Alban Berg: in fact, the Lyric Suite of 1925-26
– written as a sort of coded love letter to Berg’s
mistress Hanna Fuchs-Robettin – is hardly even a string
quartet in the traditional sense. Cast in six disparate movements
and covering a wide range of moods and styles, it is peppered
with symbolic musical quotations and allusions to their illicit
affair. Its diversity of expression is both a boon and a hindrance,
however, for although it makes for an excellent showcase of a
quartet’s capabilities, its unconventional narrative can,
in lesser hands, sound more than a little disjointed.
Thankfully, there are few greater hands in the quartet business
than those of the Alban Berg Quartet, and on Thursday they gave
the sort of well-crafted, intelligent interpretation of this eponymous
masterpiece that we’ve come to expect from them. Conceiving
the six alternating fast and slow movements as a single crescendo
of growing intensity, their performance began with an Allegretto
gioviale that was exactly what it said on the box and ended
with a Largo desolato which was as emotionally complex
as a late Beethoven quartet. Along the way, the ABQ delivered
an astonishing wealth of sounds and textures, from a literally
breathtaking pianissimo chord in the middle of the second movement
to the skeletal, washed-out sound of col legno bowing
in the Presto delirando fifth movement. Intonation was
preternaturally accurate throughout, even when playing the violent
staccato accents of that penultimate Presto; but as laudable
as their technical achievements were, it was their commitment
to – and clear love of – the music that came across
most strongly. Leader Günter Pichler swayed back and forth
in his chair, occasionally leaving it altogether in order to squeeze
the last drop of feeling out of an angular, 12-tone melody, while
the other three players followed his lead in delivering beautiful,
emotionally freighted passages that totally belied the complex
serialism at the Suite’s heart. It was a performance that
in its fusion of intelligence and real feeling perfectly captured
the genius of their patron saint’s art, and as such won
an enthusiastic response from the QEH audience.
The evening was rounded out with an equally spectacular performance
of Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden”
quartet. Here, the intensity level was white hot from the very
beginning, and the semiquaver passagework that dominated the first
movement was especially fast and furious, cutting like a razor-blade
across the cosy Viennese dance tune that was the second subject.
The Theme of the second movement’s Theme and Variations
was played relatively fast and slightly sul tasto, making
it sound like a ghostly reminiscence of the Allegretto
from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony; it was followed by a
set of variations that once again showed off the ABQ’s mastery
of large-scale forms, each variation following on as a natural
consequence of its predecessor. The last two movements were typified
by a violence normally associated with the music of Berg’s
era rather than Schubert’s, but it was a highly effective
approach that lent the music a heightened immediacy. Indeed, it
was a remarkably coherent performance all round and the blistering
rush of notes in the finale’s dance of death was as exciting
as it comes. Rapturous applause greeted the foursome after their
last perfectly synchronised chord and, hardened professionals
though they are, they couldn’t help but look pleased with
themselves as they took their bows. As well they might, for it
is a rare and difficult thing to communicate the music of two
such different composers as effectively and as convincingly as
this; but communicate they did, and with a clarity of purpose
and of expression that most musicians can only dream about.
Tristan Jakob-Hoff
