|
Site review by Polly Nomial January 6, 2009
|
Performance: |
The second disc of Beethoven from the Fry Street Quartet is again given a larger-than-life interpretation.
The Fry Street Quartet give a reading of astonishing bite and drama to the Op.18/4 quartet in C minor. To achieve this they play at quite fast speeds in all movements, always with great technical flair and no small sense of abandon, as can be heard in the gruff approach to many of the accents. This is a rough hewn approach that makes the early Beethoven sound like a bad-tempered Haydn and is very convincing on the whole.
A couple of irritations in this early quartet are that the FSQ
(1) introduce a great hiatus in the forward momentum before each entry of the second subject in the first movement, which quickly starts to grate on repeated listening
(2) play with quite a narrow dynamic range that reduces the natural drama of the music; sometimes one gets to the emotional destination quicker by being a little slower.
The narrow dynamic range comes partly because of the tempo choices but mainly because of the FSQ's seeming need to play almost every single note with quite a large vibrato rather than use it with variety and what would be appropriate for this repertoire, sparingly and certainly not all of the time!
This rather titanic approach is also taken in the late, great Op.130 with the Grosse Fuge (Op.133) as the finale. Similar irritations occur vis a vis the vibrato and dynamic range; very frustratingly, the FSQ show how it could have been done at the lower end of the dynamic spectrum quite magically just before the first compound duple time passage of the Grosse Fuge. Still this is playing of high intelligence, with the mind and ear always focussed on the musical structure.
In both performances, the FSQ play with a unanimity that is frequently astonishing and they are willing to play a little roughly in tone without sacrificing their tuning or rhythmic pulse. As they use vibrato almost for the entirety of the disc (and rarely, if ever, open strings), their dynamic range is constricted for the majority of the time as each player has to project their line of interest rather than just speak it - after a while, particularly in the Grosse Fuge, this can become a little hectoring.
Looking back at the first release, similar reservations occur and perhaps rightly so - for this is music that can never have just one approach. Many listeners will love the approach of the FSQ whereas others will compare unfavourably to other classic accounts. Unquestionably though, this is far more preferable to the Prazak cycle and looks to be a solid set in the making.
The sound is good but has one major flaw - it appears to be presented in a sonic mirror image of what one would normally expect on stage and how it was recorded (from the photo's in the notes), so that the first violin is farthest right and the viola farthest left! This aside, the engineering is exemplary but it does make it hard to rate!
|
Copyright © 2009 John Broggio and SA-CD.net
|
|
|
Site review by Geohominid November 14, 2008
|
Performance: Sonics (S/MC): / |
This disc embeds two riches: a young American quartet whose reputation is rapidly approaching legend, and a unique audiophile recording with Ray Kimber's "IsoMike" 4-channel baffled microphone system.
The Fry Street Quartet's recitals this Fall of the complete Beethoven String Quartet Cycle produced rave reviews, and it is very good that we shall have at least some of them on SACD. They like to programme works from several of Beethoven's periods rather than taking the chronological view, thus allowing the listener to compare and contrast the works. Here we are given almost the Alpha and Omega of the quartets, with one from Beethoven's first set, in which he pays homage to his former teacher and primary developer of the string quartet, Joseph Haydn, paired with one of the last in the series, where he confidently asserts his concluding thoughts on the genre.
In the Op. 18. no 4, The FSQ realise the importance of the C minor key to Beethoven, and give us a quixotic performance, fully exploiting Beethoven's already unorthodox structural arrangements. There is no slow movement as such, and the four movements are close in tempo, if differing in rhythmic impulse. Their first movement is taut, edgy and internally propelled with mordant wit, hardly relaxing for the lyrical second subject. Immediately we are aware of the FSQ's phenomenal ability to listen and respond to one another, producing a truly integrated ensemble as if they were a single instrument. The second movement's propulsive dance is still shot through with nervous energy, its canonic imitations balletically "on the point" and beautifully articulated. In the third movement they fully relish Beethoven's rusticity, a comic wrong-footed dance sliding into the shimmering trio with more gracious lyrical touches. In the fourth movement the country tones are now brusque, with gruff gestures, so much characteristic of Beethoven's reported personality, of which the FSQ are clearly aware.
With Op. 130 in B flat major, Beethoven reinvented the classical quartet structure, taking it back to its earliest days in Haydn's hands, a suite of divertimenti. Originally he ended this work with the Grosse Fuge, but this movement so horrified his publisher, that unusually the composer acceded to his protestations and composed a new finale for the quartet, relegating the Grosse Fuge to a separate opus, Op. 133 (1825). The FSQ play the original version, with the Grosse Fuge following the penultimate Cavatina movement.
Op. 130 is a strange work in many ways - even the connoisseurs among Beethoven's friends were baffled by it, although they respected his genius. The FSQ embrace the strangeness, exposing, as it were, Beethoven's very thought processes as he wrestled with the form which all musicians recognised as being the most perfect and challenging of all. They take us on a voyage of self-discovery, from the first self-communing moments of the first movement's introduction, to the wintry weather of the Presto, touched by flurries of snowflakes and racing clouds of scales, then the sweet gemütlich prancing of the German dance, deconstructed into skeletal form with pizzicati, and finding the unquiet Cavatina, which strives to find a perfect melody in what seems like a single, endless breath.
And then there comes the Grosse Fuge. Beethoven hurls the fugue subject at us like fistfuls of barbed javelins - this is a no holds barred tussle with Eternity. Bartok would have been proud of this movement, and Stravinsky praised it as an eternal specimen of modernity. Normally it leaves me cowering in a corner, for this piece requires colossal energy and physical strength, which often results in horrible string noises from lesser quartets. For the FSQ, however, this has become a tour de force. You can feel the sheer thrilling physicality of this music without it loosing tonal richness - never lacerating on the upper strings and ugly on the cello. The sense of effort and strain on the players is palpable, yet they are unflagging in their view of where this music is leading, changing gear subtly to a desolate centre section which reaches for heaven and solace, then returning to the fugue in an ironic and falsely jaunty self-parody. They bring the music home with the deepest passion and force of will, before tripping whimsically away, hurling a few final javelins over their shoulders in farewell.
Such fine performances deserve exemplary recording, and the still experimental four channel "IsoMike" system, with its oval and heart-shaped foam baffles, can be seen in an insert photograph. It looms before the FSQ like some alien device. The sound is quite unique, for rather than the convention of each instrument having a separate microphone, the Isomike array proves a coherent and totally realistic picture of the quartet as an integrated unit, in a moderately ambient and surprisingly intimate manner. The hall is the Austad Auditorium, Weber State Univerity, Utah. For stereo only users, the engineer's mix-down looses some of the ambience, none of the FSQ's tonal allure and retains most of the realism of the FSQ itself.
The presentation is very good, with an attractive and somewhat sombre splash of wet-in-wet water colours on the cover, and photos of the FSQ are set behind text. There are perceptive notes on the music, and a summary of the IsoMike system, with full details of the recording equipment in the DSD chain.
I have no doubt that this is a significant contribution to the Beethoven Quartet discography: the FSQ have the measure of these works and their playing lingers long in the memory, as does the splendid sound accorded to them.
|
Copyright © 2008 John Miller and SA-CD.net
|
|
