The String Quartets

Abstract

The Melos Quartet of Stuttgart started recording Schubert's String Quartets way back in 1971—I well remember welcoming their first record (Nos. 1-3) when it eventually was released in Britain in 1973 (DG 2530 322, 8/73). Now they offer the set in a sensibly priced box—that is to say thirteen complete quartets plus two separate C minor fragments, one of 1814 and the other the familiar Quartettsatz of 1820. This is an invaluable service. While it would be foolish to pretend that any of the early works can be mentioned in the same breath as the three masterpieces in A minor, D minor and G major of 1824-6, in their less individual way they each contain marvels— the more so when you recall that all were written when Schubert was a teenager. All, that is, except for the Quartettsatz of 1820, a kind of bridge between youth and maturity. Schubert was in fact only fifteen when writing what now survives as his No. I, with that little gem of a rustic Menuetto where con sordini scoring artfully evokes some kind of hurdy-gurdy. No. 2 in C (thanks to Schubert expert Maurice Brown's researches, played here as a complete four-movement work) has a charming Siciliano-type Andante. The remarkable slow, chromatic introduction to No. 4 in C also takes the breath away, and so you can go on all the way through—not forgetting the inspired ppp minor key answer to the opening phrase of No. 7 in D. As a member of the famous Konvikt Choir-School Orchestra, who grew up with the symphonies of Haydn, Mozart and early Beethoven, Schubert frequently doffs his cap at this great triumvirate: you can have quite a lot of fun identifying who contributes what to which. Sometimes his 'scrub-brush' figuration (and much else besides) shows him thinking too orchestrally to be good for string-quartet texture. Sometimes, too, his formal structure is unbalanced, and sometimes as a schoolboy you find him too ready to fall back on fugato as a means of keeping going when nothing better suggested itself. But always the vitality of his invention carries him through. As for the players, the enclosed booklet tells us what immense pains they took to track down authentic sources. Since I criticized them (in May 1975) for inserting a crescendo at the end of the first part of the fifth variation in the slow movement of Death and the Maiden their first time through, instead of just when repeated (as my edition specifies), it is only fair to mention here and now that they claim this as an "important correction" (but I still think it makes better musical sense the other way). Always they play con amore. Now and again the microphone even picks up that special kind of audible breathing betraying intense involvement. The only general criticism I would make is what already struck me in May when reviewing their Death and the Maiden. Their romantically expressive style sometimes disrupts continuity. Now and again I felt the need for less detailed cossetting and more awareness of the longer flow of a phrase— as, for instance, in the sad opening theme of the Andante in the last G major Quartet. With the cellist's generous vibrato and an occasional unspecified por tamento (the portamento obtrudes even more when first violin and cello share the tune in the Trio of the Scherzo) this beautiful music sounds selfindulgently, even over-ripely, sorrowful. The Amadeus Quartet in an earlier DG recording (138 048, 9/60) are more moving because the weary wanderer's grief sounds starker as he plods doggedly on. Despite this, and perhaps a rather too deliberate tempo for the finale, I still think the Melos's performance of this great G major work very fine, with dramatic projection of detail in the startling fist movement.