SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Haydn, Janáček, Brahms:  Takács Quartet, Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank, London. November 8.11. 2007 (CC)

The excellence of the Takács Quartet is pretty much a given these days, and this concert simply reiterated their status as one of the top quartets before the public today. A recent Decca DVD  from this group of core repertory of Beethoven, Schubert and Haydn included some interviews with the players (the violist then was Roger Tapping; now it is Geraldine Walther) that revealed them as players not only of intellect but also as real people possessed of an awareness of their responsibility towards the msuic they present (Decca 074 3140). If anything the ensemble is even more homogenous now, and yet all four players display real individuality in their solos.

The Haydn was the C major that forms the first of the Op. 74 set (1793), composed during a stay in Vienna. Intriguingly, the piece begins with a cadence as if a sentence was just coming to an end. The Takács' account clearly strove to highlight the motivic workings as well as the business of the musical surface. This was taut playing, the perfect reflection of Haydn's taut argument. Geraldine Walther's almost smoky viola tone lent a real emotive depth to the Andantino grazioso. After a robust Menuetto, the finale found the quartet projecting itself as a well-oiled Haydn machine, playing with real gusto. Superb.

No less superb was the second quartet of  Janáček, the so-called 'Intimate Letters' (1928). The opening carried much passion (aptly, given that the work's generating impulse was the composer's infatuation with Kamila Stösslováa girl 28 years his junior). The cello's trill in these opening bars could have had more visceral energy but  when it was the viola's turn, there was no dounting the intensity of the composer's emotions here,  Walther was magnificently expressive later on, too.

Dvořák's heritage came to the fore in the Adagio of the second movement. The fast,  obsessive repeated accompaniment figures so typical of  Janáček, were at once clear yet expressive, while the second violin's descending scale fragments were frozen in ice. Most memorable of all perhaps, was the moment at which the music threatened to explode into folk song/dance before returning to its initial mode of impassioned utterance.

The third movement's juxtapositions of frenetic outbursts and heart rending lyricism found the Takács highlighting the work's modernistic tendencies before the folkish and poignant provided the finale's fuel. A movement that ends with desperate snatchings at dance snippets,  this is harrowing music when heard stated as barely as this.

Finally, the Brahms C minor Quartet, Op. 51/1. Note, by the way, that the Takács Quartet has just released the A minor in the Op. 51 set coupled with the Brahms Piano Quintet (with Stephen Hough) on Hyperion CDA67551. This is an excellent disc, but it was surpassed by this live account of the C minor that revealed the players at their finest.

If the concert's first half had highlghted the 135-year gap between the pieces heard and the contrasts therein, the repeated notes of the viola and cello of the Brahms seemed, intriguingly, to step straight out the the closing bars of the Janáček - with the intervening twenty-minute interval simply melting away. The Takács' equal stress on all four  parts meant that Brahms' arguments made their full effect. Pianissimi were at once breathtaking and fascinating, for they existed in a strange, seemingly contradictory mix of expectation and peace.

The Romance was remarkably Beethovenian and spoke strongly of pent-up impulsiveness as much as of tender hymns to humanity. The important point though,  is that it was never just delicate, for example – there was alsways some deeper, if understated, meaning present. An exquisitely judged Allegretto molto moderato e comodo, with singing cello and marvellously placed syncopations included an Intermezzo-like passage that delivered pure joy while the opening of the finale simply soared on air. The Takács seemed to highlight the music's threat to run out of control at one point, before the composer himself applied the brakes. As throughout this magnificent Brahms performance, the emotional range expressed was as wide as the dynamic one.

Colin Clarke

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