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Takacs Quartet at Spivey Hall
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Concert Review
Takács String Quartet, Sunday at Spivey Hall in Morrow. www.spiveyhall.org.
The Takács String Quartet, which performed Sunday afternoon in the luxurious acoustics of Spivey Hall, are the sort of artists who give a reviewer trouble. Once you’re spent your superlatives on them — a few years ago, after a devastatingly good concert, I called them “the preeminent quartet of our time� — and they outperform themselves yet again, what’s to say?
The group’s current line up is a foursome of two Englishmen and two Hungarians — violinists Edward Dusinberre and Károly Schranz, violist Roger Tapping, cellist András Fejér — and they gave a blessedly substantive program.
Bartók is their specialty, and they made his knotty Third String Quartet exceptionally vivid and witty, burnished in tone and alive in personality. The scurrying phrases of the “Seconda parte� here became part of a compelling story line.
They played Borodin’s popular Second String Quartet, including the hit-tune Nocturne, without sentimentality, and the work grew in stature.
They closed with a big event: Beethoven’s C-sharp minor String Quartet, Op. 131, one of the late, introspective, unfathomably deep works composed after his Ninth Symphony. In seven connected movements, the stone-deaf Beethoven went off the grid of what a string quartet was supposed to be. The Op. 131 is mostly abstract and proto-modernist, at turns impenetrably dense and dancing, joyous or fateful. It’s safe to say no ensemble, in 178 years, has explored every corner of this cosmic music and been able to elucidate it all in a single performance.
The Takács came closer than most. Although the opening Adagio movement, a long, slow fugue, took a few minutes to gel, they brushed the movement’s serene nature, setting the otherworldly mood necessary to contrast with the jazzy, syncopated detour that follows. By the grand fourth movement — a theme and variations — the inhibitions were gone, the play off each other seemed spontaneous, searching. The dialogue between cellist Fejér and violist Tapping was notably tight, the men listening and breathing as one.
With perfect comic timing, the Takács understood Beethoven’s vivid sense of humor: for a round of pizzicato plunks they made me laugh aloud. I like it when that happens in a concert.
Later, after a sublime transition into another Adagio, this one deathly and summarizing, they made the final Allegro movement a savage romp, a slashing, horror flic glimpse into the abyss. I like when that happens, too.
In the lobby, after the concert — no encore could follow the finale of that Beethoven — I spoke with two local violinists who became converts. In giddy agreement, they said, “We’ve never heard better string quartet playing.�
The current Takács membership has been stable since 1995. Tragically, next season will be different: violist Tapping is quitting the group. A quartet’s character alters with new personnel, so for Atlantans, this really might have been the end of an impressive chamber music reign.
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By Lawrence Schenbeck
October 15, 2004 12:09 PM | Link to this
Thanks Pierre for summing up this magical afternoon so vividly. What an astonishing group — and I had particularly enjoyed Tapping’s contribution to it all.