Fine
Arts admirers will be squinting hard at the title of this
disc but they – and others – must bear in mind that this
is a reissue of an LP from 1979. Even then things are not
that simple. The Fine Arts gave its first performance in
1946 and the sleeve-note to that LP was written in 1976 – which
made perfect sense in 1976 but the LP appeared three years
later and this CD in the year of their sixtieth anniversary.
It might have made more sense for Gasparo to have made
this explicit rather than to sow some confusion in the
minds of prospective purchasers - though I should add there’s
no attempt to hide the original date of recording which
is clearly spelled out on the back of the jewel case.
The present quartet to
bear the name naturally has no relation to the original
line-up. For this recording it was the settled combination
of Sorkin, Loft, Zaslav and Sopkin. I reviewed the Fine
Arts’s complete Beethoven quartet recordings on this site – their
Everest recordings were cool and clear, avoiding extremes
and equable with more sensitive musicianship involved than
some have deigned to find. This anniversary disc conforms
to the group’s known strengths, firm instrumental address,
a lean sonority, well-matched first and second fiddles
and clean textures. It also reflects some of their weaknesses – a
certain astringency of tone and a rather driving, almost
motoric relentlessness.
This
applies particularly in the case of the Shostakovich. If
one judges this performance against one made the following
year by the Shostakovich Quartet, released later in a complete
cycle in an Olympia CD box and an earlier 1968 disc by
the Taneyev, now in an Aulos box of the complete quartets,
one sees the Fine Arts’s traversal in firmer context. The
Fine Arts are curiously one-dimensional throughout, preferring
drive to finesse, though allowing a lot of detail to be
heard. One of the biggest problems is the highly unsympathetic
recording which is very up-front and glassy and reduces
any dynamic subtleties the quartet may effect to mere theory.
Consequently there’s no light and shade here and colour
is in very short supply. The too-loud recording level does
for the slow movement and the stern impatience of much
of the playing sounds cumulatively rather unsympathetic.
The Taneyev achieve an altogether different level of imaginative
re-creation and the Shostakovich Quartet show that angularity
can be accompanied by colour.
The
Prokofiev is a less problematic work and receives a less
problematic reading. But the steeliness and abrasive recording
level still does its worst and there’s not enough colour
and therefore subtle inflexion throughout all three movements.
Rhythmically the quartet has sharp reflexes, those finale
off beats are nicely characterised for instance, and the
timbral consonance of the fiddle players is apt. But the
recording manages to exaggerate the sense of over-projection
incessantly.
This
is one for admirers of the quartet – it’s not otherwise
competitive.
Jonathan Woolf
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The Fine
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