Bartók: The String Quartets

This is really top-notch, but in a field where the competition is particularly strong. If you have a precise idea of how you like the Bartok quartets done I think you need to sample a good half-dozen current sets to see which suits you best. Myself, I am comparatively open to suggestion in this matter. Back in the 60's the Juilliard Quartet recorded a set that ranks as a classic - they had been promoting the Bartok quartets as a specialisation. I recommend it fervently to anyone who can still find it on LP, as sadly it seems to be absent from today's catalogues. What intrigues me in comparing the Hagens with it is how different the overall impression contrives to be despite a close similarity in the more tangible features. Tempi throughout are very little different, to take the most obvious issue. The difference is in the instrumental tone, and it's emphasised by the type of recorded sound each is given. The recording of the Juilliard group is admirable, with perfectly silent surfaces for the first 5 works and only a minor flaw on the 6th. The Juilliard are warmer, the Hagens more austere. Occasionally I can pinpoint some difference, such as more vibrato from the Juilliards in the opening `Mesto' of the last quartet, but overall it's a matter of a different `feel', very perceptible but very hard to define.

There is no getting away from taking some kind of intellectual view of this music. Bartok is not always uncompromising and forbidding in his idiom to say the least. The first piano concerto is a flinty bit of work indeed and so is the Miraculous Mandarin ballet, but the more famous violin concerto and even (perhaps surprisingly) Bluebeard's Castle are far from difficult to come to terms with. The quartets in general seem to me to incline towards his severe side, but not uniformly. Broadly, I would separate the first quartet from the others. Music had come to a Rubicon by the end of the 19th century. Schoenberg found a `sublime inevitability' in the quartets of Brahms. So do I, but the trouble with inevitability is that there's not much to be added to it. Schoenberg's own revolutionary Second Viennese School could still take Brahms as the foundation of their own style, but in general the more distinguished quartet-writers of the early 20th century who had come under German influence felt a need to strike out in some new way without abandoning traditional tonality entirely as Schoenberg did. Folk-music came into vogue and its influence is clear variously in Ravel, Britten and Vaughan Williams, and of course Bartok dedicated himself to a methodical study of the folk-music of the Balkans. Bartok also took as the model for his first essay Beethoven's great quartet in C# minor, the least `inevitable' of that master's quartets, rather an extended fantasia with no divisions between movements. Bartok's sound at the start recalls Beethoven's strongly, and there are numerous detailed points of resemblance. Thereafter Bartok aimed at some inevitability of his own, using a variety of structural devices - repetition, variation, recapitulation - to strengthen the sense of formal coherence.

This is music of the elements rather than of the emotions, I would say, just as I would say that of a lot of Sibelius. It has a far more abstract and `absolute' sense about it than the quartets of Britten and still more those of Shostakovich have. For that very reason I find the approach that the Hagen quartet adopt to be impressive and convincing, and the recorded tone they are given to be well tailored to their style. We each need to have at least an approximate idea of what this music is all about, and I would enjoin caution in reading the liner-note with this set. It sounds authoritative, but I came away with a distinct sense that it doesn't so much have something to say as have to say something. The thoughts seem to me disjointed and random, lacking a coherent vision.

For my own part, I find Bartok fascinating. He is not the friendliest musical genius that ever was, but he is not a musical ogre either. I can't shake off my liking for the Juilliard effect in these works, but the way the Hagens go about them is not only convincing in its own right but a very illuminating counterweight to the style of their great forerunners. It is absolutely `authentic' on its own, and the playing is superlative. They will not mislead you about Bartok in any way. Whether they will suit you best out of the current offerings I simply have no way of knowing.

There are solid, respectable performances of these landmark works. Those new to Bartok's string quartets will get a set of performances that enunciate what these are all about. Those who love these works and return to them will want to hear some of the landmark recordings by others.

Arguably the greatest set of string quartets since Beethoven, few listeners will immediately be won over by them. They were composed at the dawn of modernism and while so much can be written about them, I'd boil it down to how it seems Bartok foresaw the future of modernism and demonstrated a workable route on a map that is filled with dead ends. These works merge intellectual rigor with inspiration from Hungarian folk music - Bartok was an early ethnomusicologist - yet, they are so novel in the way such inspirations are folded into the music without 'quoting' folk melodies. Bartok was not sentimental and shunned clichés, and while these attributes make him fascinating, they also make these works forbidding the first few times.

As for these performances by the Hagen Quartet: I find it useful to consider two ends of a spectrum in how these can be performed. At one end is a highly intellectual and virtuosic manner, generating excitement from the structure, musical effects and musician prowess. In this vein are classic performances by the Juilliard Quartet (1963) and Tokyo Quartet (1st cycle on DG). Both made later recordings that have been less well received, though they changed their approach to make things interesting. The Emerson Quartet also loosely falls somewhat to this end, their general style brilliantly virtuosic and sometimes a little cold. At the other end of the spectrum are performances that are more visceral and organic, tending to emphasize the folk influences more. The Vegh Quartet (2nd 1970s cycle) and Takacs (2nd cycle on Decca) are highly recommended on this regard. This Hagen Quartet set falls in the middle, but more to the Juilliard end. These are virtuosic takes, though I might have wanted a little more irritability and force to some of the way they phrase things, especially as they don't let the folk elements swing and sing as much. There are other strong contenders out there, such as by the Hungarian and Alban Berg Quartets. A couple of underdogs I would champion are the Keller Quartet and the New Budapest Quartet, the latter undeservedly obscure but both are real winners on the more "Hungarian" approach.

These are truly great works of chamber music that do reward returning to again and again. Like Beethoven's quartets, they can withstand very different stylistic approaches that highlight different aspects of the music. Also like Beethoven, they reveal the composer's development, showing his roots in late-romanticism in the early two quartets, a highly innovative mature style in the middle works (3-5), and a valedictory summation that mines the dark corners of the soul.