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There’s
no indication that this is the first
in a two CD cycle of the Martinů
Quartets by the young Emperor Quartet
– but it would be good to think so.
There certainly aren’t enough traversals
of the works around that addicts can
afford to turn up the opportunity to
acquire a new one, especially one so
expertly recorded and annotated (by
Aleš Březina, who co-authored the
critical revisions of the Fourth and
Fifth and whose work on the Third was
solo). So full marks to BIS for
this release, which shows the Emperor
on youthful, vertiginous and dynamic
form.
I’d certainly recommend
the disc for its verve and its drama
– but let’s take a quick look at the
native Stamitz Quartet on Brilliant
(ex-Bayer, recorded in 1990 and harnessed
to a Czech Masters 5 CD set – exceptionally
cheap though). The Emperor’s Third –
that puzzling twelve minute three movement
work - is full of fine things; good
motoric playing; the viola line brought
out realistically; a fine tempo, the
same one in fact as the Stamitz. And
yet the older group set their internal
clock with absolute nerveless accuracy;
there is something inexorable about
the tread of their clock that defines
the movement, that stamps a presence
on it. The Emperor sculpts big, but
the Stamitz digs deeper. Elsewhere I’d
place the Emperor high; a nicely accented
finale, brittle and immediate and some
slashing fiddle playing.
The Fourth, written
in 1937 – I notice Březina
doesn’t label it Concerto
da Camera as it used to be, so maybe
there’s been an editorial change – opens
in the motoric Paris School of 1937.
Here the Stamitz are more urgent, with
a great sense of inner rhythm, the Emperor
taking a more relaxed view,
making the most of the woozy suspensions
that Martinů demands and having
generally a more romantic approach;
they tend to be more expressive, the
Stamitz, to be blunt, more cohesive.
These differences are fairly consistent;
the Stamitz more avian and lighter
in the finale, the Emperor playing up
the contrasts. In the Fifth, significantly
the longest of the three and dating
from 1938 the Emperor find some breathtaking
lyric moments and they etch dramatically
in the slow movement, managing to suggest,
through curdled inner voices, the despair
to come. They certainly are a graphic
quartet in this repertoire, not least
in the finale, where I prefer the Stamitz’s
funereal tread to the Emperor’s more
open response. Maybe it’s a matter of
their respective views of the work.
These are powerful
and eloquent performances; they don’t
replace established recommendations
but they do open up an opportunity to
explore the Emperor’s more abrasively
vertical response to these works.
Jonathan Woolf
Emperor String Quartet 