Comparison recordings
Quartet - Dante Qt, Hyperion CDA67664
Quintet - Levinas, Qt Ludwig, Naxos 8.553645
The arrival of the new Naxos recording of César Franck’s
String
Quartet and
Piano Quintet presents the additional
opportunity to compare it with the award-winning Hyperion recording
of the
Quartet, coupled with the Gabriel Fauré
String
Quartet, and with the highly regarded older Naxos recording
of the Quintet, coupled with Ernest Chausson’s
String
Quartet.
I began by listening to the
Levinas/
Ludwig Quartet version
of the
Piano Quintet and found it to be every bit as fine
as the reviewers in 1998 pronounced it - ardent and enthusiastic
playing and with a well-balanced recording in which the piano
is never allowed to be too prominent. I have no hesitation in
regarding this as my benchmark for judging the new recording.
Their account of the slow movement which, with some justification,
is often regarded as the heart of the work, strikes just the
right balance of affectiveness - never overdone but always heartfelt.
With a fine coupling of d’Indy’s partial completion
of Chausson’s
String Quartet, a work left incomplete
at his death, this still warrants a strong recommendation. The
Chausson is no match for the Franck
Quintet, but still
very well worth hearing. The lossless version from passionato sounds
excellent. I haven’t sampled the less expensive mp3 versions
from passionato and classicsonline but,
at 256kbps and 320kbps respectively, I have always found mp3s
from these providers to be more than acceptable.
The leader of the
Dante Quartet is none other than Krysia
Osostowicz, erstwhile member of Domus, whose Hyperion Fauré
Piano
Quartets and
Piano Quintets won so much admiration;
they feature among my recent choice of
Thirty
Top Hyperion Recordings.
Their account of the Franck
Quartet makes a very good
case indeed for this somewhat neglected work - a reading so powerful
that one wonders why it isn’t more often performed. We
seem to have missed this at MusicWeb International when it was
released, but I’m happy to concur with the general acclaim
which greeted it and to regard it as my benchmark. With an equally
fine version of the Fauré coupling, another powerful work
from its composer’s last years, good recording and the
usual high quality of documentation, this is highly recommendable.
It augurs well for the Dante Quartet’s forthcoming Hyperion
recording of the Debussy and Ravel Quartets, which I hope to
include in a forthcoming Download Roundup.
The combination of
Cristina Ortiz and the
Fine Arts
Quartet on Naxos has already produced a coupling of the Fauré
Piano
Quintets to challenge the superb Hyperion/Domus disc: Ian
Lace made it
Recording of the Month (8.570938 - see
review).
The new version has all the virtues of the older Naxos account
in the opening movement. The recording is, perhaps, a little
more forwardly balanced and the piano slightly more prominently
placed, but otherwise there is very little to choose between
this and the older version. Both capture the passion inherent
in the music very well, the newer version a little more forcefully
than its predecessor.
The obvious difference between the old and new Naxos recordings
concerns the tempo for the slow movement. I’ve already
indicated that Levinas and the Ludwig Quartet get just the right
balance here - affective but never over-sentimental and providing
just the right contrast with the finale - so it follows that
their timing of 11:40 also seems to me about right and the Ortiz/Fine
Arts 10:20 too fast, on paper at least.
In fact, there is a wide range of tempi in recordings of this
movement. Surely Sviatoslav Richter and the Bolshoi Quartet,
who take a whole 12:47, overdo the marking
con molto sentimento.
At the other extreme, the new Naxos is not by any means the fastest
account of the slow movement: the Amati Quartet and Werner Bartschi,
on Divox, polish it off in 10:04 and the Petersen Quartet with
Artur Pizarro, on a Phoenix recording which has been well received
in some quarters, are only marginally slower than Ortiz and the
Fine Arts at 10:40. With Kalle Randalu and the Mandelring Quartet
on Antes Edition taking 10:24 and The Schubert Ensemble (Champs
Hill Records, formerly ASV) 10:30, the Ortiz/Fine Arts tempo
begins to look more like the norm, especially when Michael Cookson
praised the ‘flowing and expressive account of the central
movement’ of the Schubert Ensemble recording - see
review.
In reality, I wasn’t surprised to discover that I found
little to choose between the two Naxos accounts of this movement.
That apparently large paper difference becomes insignificant
in the event, with both groups capturing the mood very effectively,
once again demonstrating that timing alone is often unimportant
in the overall context. I’m sure that if I had played them
one after the other,
Building a Library style, the differences
would have seemed more apparent, but I prefer to judge a performance
as a whole; by that criterion, I could happily live with both
versions.
In the Quartet the major difference arises not in the slow, third
movement, where the Fine Arts and Dante Quartets are largely
in agreement about the basic tempo - both give the music due
weight - as in the outer movements: the Hyperion opening movement
is rather weightier and the finale lighter than the Naxos account.
The Pro Arte Quartet on a historic (1933) recording on Radiex
Music and the Academica String Quartet on Dynamic both take even
longer over the first movement and are only a little slower than
the Dante Quartet in the finale. The timings of the Gewandhaus
Quartet on Berlin Classics and the Quatuor Ysayë on Ysayë Records
are also very close to those of the Dante Quartet. A highly regarded
1978 version by the Fitzwilliam Quartet on Australian Eloquence
offers considerably slower timings than the Dantes in both outer
movements. It’s another case of the Fine Arts being out
on a limb, especially in the opening movement.
Once again, however, the differences which appear on paper become
far less important when one listens to the actual performances.
I do marginally prefer the Dante Quartet’s performances
of the outer movements, especially in view of the greater weight
which they give to the opening, but I could - and shall - be
more than happy to live with the Fine Arts version. Though I
could never describe the Dante’s finale as hurried, it
would be equally difficult to describe the Fine Arts as dawdling
here.
The new Naxos recording is very good throughout. The notes, by
Keith Anderson, are brief but, as usual, informative; they may
not be in quite the same league as the more detailed ones by
Roger Nichols for Hyperion but they will do very well. In any
case, Hyperion generously offer all comers access to the pdf
version of their booklet.
In the end, I think you must allow the choice of coupling and
price to decide your choice. Both recordings of the Franck
String
Quartet and
Piano Quintet are very good and thoroughly
recommendable. The new Naxos version of the
Quintet is
more logically coupled than the old; though the Franck
Quartet is
almost as much a Cinderella of the repertoire as the Chausson,
it was for me the more impressive work.
On the other hand, the Dante seem to me to have a slight advantage
over the new version of the
String Quartet and their Fauré coupling
is equally attractive. They are more expensive at full price
but that differential is considerably reduced if, like me, you
download from the Hyperion
website - £7.99 for the mp3 or the lossless flac version.
The latter is fully equivalent in quality to the CD and it comes
with that pdf version of the booklet to print out.
You wouldn’t have any cause to feel short-changed by the
new Naxos, but my preference would be to purchase the Hyperion
and the older Naxos, thereby obtaining excellent performances
of four fine works, with no duplication. If you followed my recommendation
to obtain the Hyperion versions of the Fauré
Piano
Quartets and
Piano Quintets, the Dante Quartet’s
version of his
String Quartet is almost a mandatory acquisition.
Brian Wilson
Cristina Ortiz (piano); Fine Arts
Quartet 
