concert review: Takács Quartet

[calimac]

A few weeks ago, my editor alerted (warned, cautioned, even admonished) me that he'd be expecting me to cover the Takács Quartet's Bartók cycle. Holy bleep, what an assignment. Toughest I've had since being sent to hear the Concord Sonata. (And that was why I was looking for somebody who really likes Bartók.)

This called for intensive pre-concert study, to get a handle on these works I'd never entirely digested. I'd heard them all at one time or another, but the only one I'd ever enjoyed hearing was the Fourth, and I don't claim to understand any of them.

Unfortunately, a satisfactory study of such difficult works would take at least 10 or 12 hours, and exigencies, alluded to earlier in this blog, meant that there was no time. None. I read a little technical musicology about them, I perused and marked up the scores, but that was about it. I didn't even make a full listen to recordings, because I couldn't do it early enough to prevent the concert from becoming fatigue instead of enlightenment.

As a result, my review reads to me an amateur's view, Thog goes to a string quartet concert. I sat there through weird and bewildering passage after passage, just trying to find some sort of handle to grab on to. In the end I had to write about the knobs and not the train. It just added to the intensity of an already high-pressure weekend.

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I suspect I'd have loved that concert!

[(Anonymous)]

Now I feel bad. I was lazy and didn’t reply to your previous post about Bartok, not understanding that you were in genuine need of help.

As it happens, I saw the Takacs Bartok cycle here in New York (Zankel Hall inside Carnegie Hall), also on a Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon; I hadn’t previously had an opportunity to see the whole cycle (I’d seen three of them done separately), and though the tickets were expensive, it was worth it: for me, a feast.

I have to say, by the way, that I think your review (despite how it stressed you) is really very good; you, unlike I, have things to say about the nuances of the performers, and your point about the specific influences of Bartok on later music are well-chosen: I entirely agree. (Myself, I wouldn’t have thought of those, because I see Bartok’s influence everywhere, even in jazz and rock.)

The thing that most impressed me about the Takacs (apart from their total command of the music, of course) was their ability to maintain a clear rhythmic throughline, which is crucial in order for the constant cross-rhythms and jumping of the beat to tell properly. They are just a hair less strident than the Juilliard (still my touchstone for the quartets), but for most people that’s probably a plus.

I’m surprised you like the 4th the best, because that’s one of the “difficult” ones; it and the 3rd are the greatest music I’ve ever heard. The Takacs did them both justice (though the one time in the concerts when they seemed to be fighting the material just a bit was in the first movement of the 4th); my favorite moment was the Seconda Parte of the 3rd, where I actually had tears in my eyes from the intensity of the music.

(I agree that for some reason the 5th was the least effective performance.)

To return to your review, I think you gave a good perspective on the cycle for the ordinary listener, not soft-pedalling the asperities but appreciating their richness and importance.

Don Keller

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

My previous cryptic post wasn't looking for help in studying the works. Either I have time to do that on my own or I do not; and, at the date of the post, I did not yet know my time would be so limited. What I was looking for was someone to attend the concert with me. And if you were out here, sir, I would invite you to every tough modern music concert I review, and be grateful for your insights.

I like the Fourth best for two reasons: it seems to have the highest concentration of interesting and delightful effects; and the most convincing and winning performance I've ever heard of a Bartok quartet was of the Fourth by the TinAlley Quartet a few years ago. It pleased me more than their more conventional repertoire.

Relative accessibility of the six quartets doesn't enter into it. That was the point of the 4th paragraph of my review. If you analogize "difficulty" to situating on the high plains, I don't see the Sixth, for instance, as at a lower elevation or down in a river valley. It's at the same elevation as the others, just with a hole in the ground.

I saw that the Takacs were performing this in NYC, but I didn't want to read the reviews before finishing my own, and I didn't have time to look them up to compare reactions afterwards before turning mine in, though I sometimes do that to help clarify my own thoughts.

[(Anonymous)]

The fifth movement of the fourth quartet has been thrice adapted by drum and bugle corps, if you can imagine that--once by your neighbors, the Santa Clara Vanguard. That's not the only Bartok to be heard on the football field (among other pieces, parts of the Concerto for Orchestra have been played several times), but perhaps the most unlikely.

-MTD/neb