Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
String Quartet No.15 in A minor Op. 132 [44]
String Quartet No.16 in F major Op. 135 [23]
Ehnes Quartet
rec. 2020, Neva Langley Fickling Hall, Mercer University, Macon, USA
Reviewed as a digital download from a press preview
ONYX 4227 [68]
I’m sorry to say that I am a real latecomer to the art of James Ehnes. In amongst a blizzard of lockdown solo Bach violin recordings, his stood head and shoulders above his rivals. Of course, quartet playing is a very different beast but, particularly in late Beethoven, there are definite advantages to having a star fiddler on first violin. Though for me the standout performer on this recording is the cellist Edward Arron who makes such a scrumptious nutty sound I suspect I could happily listen to him practice scales. I hope this opening salvo doesn’t give the impression that the Ehnes Quartet are anything but a crack ensemble. They are very much not a star vehicle.
Whilst I am skirting around the issue of what these performances are like, I want to mention the quality of the sound on this Onyx release. There is a lot of reverberation around it without it becoming bland as the sound can often be in
Op. 132 particularly. The natural resonance is at its most helpful in the trio of the second movement and, of course, in the Heiliger Dankgesang, where Beethoven exploits the celestial resonances of open strings. I was pleased that even though clearly he and his colleagues are more than a match for Beethoven’s technical demands, they leave plenty of rosin on their bows, so to speak. Playing late Beethoven in any genre should never sound easy. There needs to be, as here, an edge to the string sound.
The Ehnes Quartet take what might, broadly speaking, be termed a forthright approach to these famous works. The opening of
Op. 132 shows us very clearly how things are going to go: it is direct, clear and unfussy. The Quatuor Ebčne in their 2020 release are much more inward. My personal preferences tend toward the latter but there is a lot to be said for giving us this much recorded work straight. The Ehnes’ tempi choices, too, come very much from the middle ground – not as precipitous, for example, as the Küss Quartet in the slow movement of
Op. 132 but still 3 minutes shorter in this movement than the expansive Ebčne. The latter is a truly great account and their very slow speed is justified by a Molto Adagio tempo marking. The Ehnes’ timing is very close to another great recording, the Vegh on Calliope. All of this is stated to give the reader the idea that the Ehnes Quartet have very little interest in foisting their own bright ideas on two unsuspecting Beethoven quartets.
One of the effects of this manner is that Op. 132 sounds much more closely aligned to the classical quartet tradition than usual. Its outer movements sound much less like declamations from the top of Mount Olympus than usual. That sense of tradition also looks forward as well as back: I had never previously thought how much the finale sounds like Schubert, for example.
Refreshing though I found this, I did find myself yearning for a little more spiritual depth in
Op. 132. In the slow movement it isn’t just a matter of speed. The opening section should breathe a calm that searches the most significant aspects of the human experience. A slightly more mobile tempo does allow the music to flow more naturally than in some very slow, very stilted accounts but great accounts like the Busch flow naturally as well as enjoying the benefit of the kind of serenity only a truly molto adagio can afford. Staying with the Busch, they find more turmoil as well as more light and shade in the opening movement of
Op. 132 than the Ehnes though again I was glad to hear a less febrile view of this movement than is common.
Where the Ehnes are at their best is in the more obviously classically oriented
Op. 135. I have long been of the view that this quartet represents an outlier to the sequence of the late quartets, signalling yet another change of direction in Beethoven’s protean career, one cut short by his death. Where the previous late quartets had burst the seams of the quartet as Beethoven inherited it from Mozart and Haydn, this one distills the essence of those late quartets within the limits set by his two illustrious predecessors. More controversially, perhaps, I believe the much maligned replacement finale to
Op. 130 follows a similar line, its astonishing combination of concision and profundity being overlooked by the unfortunate fact of not being the Grosse Fuge.
It seems to me the Ehnes have the ideal combination of qualities to pull off
Op. 135 and this they do with real aplomb. There is no striving after false depths. It’s all there in the writing if the performers trust Beethoven. Indeed the depths of
Op. 135 only reveal themselves if the performers relish its wit and urbanity and respect its classical outlines. If a quartet like
Op. 127 should be constantly on the verge of shattering the intimate frame of chamber music,
Op. 135 should dally with it.
On the other hand, this is Beethoven so a certain amount of animal spirits is desirable. Like the outer movements of the Eighth symphony,
Op. 135 should be full of potential energy like a coiled spring and those moments such as the great romp toward the end of the second movement where Beethoven slips the leash are splendidly exuberant in the hands of the Ehnes. But, crucially, without ever distorting the finely balanced proportions of the both the movement and the work as a whole.
The Ehnes are at their very best in the deliciously wit yet wise pizzicato passage right at the end of the finale, assisted by the slightly more generous than normal acoustic in which they are recorded. If Beethoven is warmly poking fun at the high seriousness of the works that preceded
Op. 135, there is astonishing insight in the perception that for all the pain and suffering Beethoven has gone through, life is essentially a comedy not a tragedy. The Ehnes’ delivery of this passage has the comic timing of a great stand up comedian and it could stand for the entirety of this excellent performance.
Good though the Ehnes’ version of Op. 132 is it won’t be causing me to budge from my current favourite amongst modern versions, that by the Quatuor Ebčne. Turning to
Op. 135, however, and the Ehnes go straight to the top alongside a sparkling account by the Küss Quartet on Rubicon Classics which, incidentally, went largely unnoticed on release but also includes superb versions of
Op. 127 and Op. 130. No quartet can ever approach definitive versions of these two works. The Busch Quartet got as close as anyone but these works are inexhaustible and I could probably list another half a dozen recordings that tell us something important about them. The Ehnes join that exalted list especially in their elegant, droll version of
Op. 135.
David McDade
