These are warmly sympathetic and very attractive performances,
and I’m happy to make their acquaintance. I’m also happy to
listen again to the Pavel Haas Quartet whose previous recordings
have won great favour, and which I’ve greatly enjoyed. You sense
a ‘but’. Well, possibly. Such reservations as I have are localised
and principally concern Op.106, not the ubiquitous F major so
much.
It’s important to stress the warm and rich tonal blend of the
quartet and also their instinct for contrast, even when they
take things to what some may consider an extreme. They’re a
truly communicative and enveloping ensemble and have been richly
recorded in the Rudolfinum by the Supraphon engineers. All right,
I suppose it’s time for my objection. I think they make a meal
of the first movement of the G major. The contrast between the
daintily coquettish violin statements and the answering, aggressive
lower string responses is, to me, far too pronounced. It turns
the opening paragraphs into virtual warfare. The old Vlach doesn’t
do it, and neither does the Panocha, and I don’t know many,
if any, quartets that take things to quite this level of extremity,
or sculpt things quite so graphically. The effect is to inflate
the movement, and beyond it, the quartet itself, to quasi-string
orchestral status.
Let me add a rider to the above. If you can accommodate or assimilate
their approach, or if it suits your feelings about this admittedly
big, powerfully constructed work, then you will find a huge
amount to admire. Performers have their own ideas about things.
Certainly the slow movement is warmly textured, though I don’t
find it as cumulatively moving as the Vlach. I do like the faster
tempo the Pavel Haas take for the Molto vivace third movement;
the Vlach sound a touch dogged here next to the resinous drive
of the newcomers, though it’s an approach consonant with the
Vlach’s performance as a whole. The finale strikes me as exceptionally
successful as well.
The American receives a fine reading, a few little moments
of idiosyncrasy aside, and these are mainly to do with rhythmic
inaccuracies in the finale. That and a feeling, here too, that
the music isn’t being unfolded as naturally as it might. Tempi
are well judged, there is a fine corporate sonority and a good
sense of characterisation. That said, and I must say it, do
you really need another American?
I’m sorry to sound more critical than perhaps I really feel.
These are virile and assured readings. It’s just that others
are ‘better’.
Jonathan Woolf
Pavel Haas Quartet 
