Arts & Events

On Saturday-Sunday, March 4-5, the Takács Quartet resumed its series of the complete Beethoven string quartets in Berkeley’s Hertz Hall. Begun in October of 2016, this series presents all of Beethoven’s string quartets in six concerts, from October 2016 to mid-April 2017. This weekend, I attended the Sunday afternoon concert featuring Beethoven’s Op. 18, No. 3 Quartet, the Op. 59, No. 2, “Rasumovsky” Quartet, and the Op. 127 Quartet.  

As always, the Takács Quartet demonstrated superb musicianship and a profound comprehension of Beethoven’s achievements in the string quartet format. Few of the world’s current string quartets can bring as much experience and knowledge of these works to bear in their performances as the Takács Quartet; and one that could, and did, the Cypress String Quartet, has recently decided to disband and move on individually to other things. Thus we are doubly indebted to the Takács Quartet for offering at this moment an in-depth exploration of the string quartet repertoire that played such an important role in the career of Ludwig van Beethoven. 

Throughout this concert series, the Takács Quartet strives to offer in each concert a string quartet from each of the main periods of Beethoven’s career, the early, middle, and late periods. In Sunday’s concert, they offered Beethoven’s early Op. 18, No. 3 Quartet, his middle period Op. 59, No. 2 Quartet, and his late period Op. 127 Quartet. The Op. 18, No. 3 Quartet was actually the first string quartet Beethoven composed. It is in D Major, and it begins in a most unusual way, with two long unaccompanied notes on the violin, arching upwards, as the program notes specify, to a minor seventh, just a whole tone short of an octave. It’s as if Beethoven, in the first of his string quartets, sought to assert an original voice.  

Traditionally, string quartets had been conceived as music that might be played by a group of friends gathered in someone’s living room. Even Haydn and Mozart had begun writing string quartets in this light-hearted style convivial to amateur musicians, though later in their careers both Haydn and Mozart wrote far more serious and more difficult string quartets. Beethoven, however, began from the outset writing serious, difficult string quartets in which he explored unusual, often surprising key relations. The unusual opening of the D Major Quartet created problems later, when Beethoven needed to integrate this opening gambit into a cohesive first movement. His solution was brilliant: After a chord of C-sharp Major, the violins cease to play while the viola and cello sustain a C-sharp minor note. Then the second violin enters, allowing the home key of D Major to reassert itself in the third bar. Beethoven later used this same gambit in his Second Symphony.
There are surprises as well in the later movements of Op. 18, No. 3. The slow movement offers a main theme adumbrated by the second violin. A four-note phrase in rising pattern jumps a whole tone higher with each leap. Countersubjects ground the piece, and inversions of the main theme further ground the piece. Event-ually, this music dies away in a pianissimo conclusion. The third movement offers off-beat accents and unexpected tonal shifts. The finale offers a brisk Presto, with an underlying rhythm of a tarantella. Even the ending is a surprise: It is almost no ending at all, merely a reiterated fragment of the main theme, followed by what we expect is a mere pause but turns out to be the final punctuation mark in this highly exploratory string quartet.  

Next on Sunday’s program was Beethoven’s E minor Quartet, Op. 59, No. 2, one of three quartets known as the Rasumovsky Quartets. Count Rasumovsky was the Russian ambassador in Vienna and a great patron of music. The Op. 59, No. 2 Quartet in E minor begins in startling fashion. Two aggressive chords are sounded followed by a softly rising and falling phrase. Then a pause occurs, after which the subdued phrase is repeated a semitone higher. This harmonic shift is quite disorienting. Moreover, the opening chords are dramatically repeated both at the start of the first movement’s central development and again at its climax. These assertive chords thus present a kind of signature, an altogether dramatic and arresting one that grabs the listener’s attention and won’t let go.  

The second movement, a slow Adagio, was considered by J.W.N. Sullivan one of the greatest slow movements Beethoven wrote at this period of his career. Beethoven’s friend and pupil Carl Czerny maintained that Beethoven conceived this slow movement “while contemplating the starry heavens and thinking of the music of the spheres.” To be sure, this music is sublime, radiant and serene. The third movement is a scherzo marked Allegretto. It offers agitated short phrases and an off-beat stress on the second beat of the bar. The work’s finale offers a galloping theme marked Presto, and it is indeed a romp. 

After intermission, the Takács Quartet returned to perform Beethoven’s String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 127. Commissioned by Prince Galitzen, himself a competent amateur cellist, the Op. 127 Quartet features the cello quite prominently. The Takács Quartet’s cellist, András Fejér, disported himself royally in this work, particularly in the second movement, where the cello shares the main theme with the first violin, the latter played by Edward Dusinberre. The E-flat Major Quartet opens with a series of assertive chords. Here too, as in the Op. 18, No. 3 Quartet heard earlier, this is a dramatic, portentous opening. Here too, as well, the chords return later in the first movement, though each time in a different key. In the second movement, the cello initiates a series of variations with a throbbing note, which rises steadily as, first, the viola, played here by Geraldine Walther, then the second violin, played here by Károly Schranz, and, finally, the first violin enter one by one. The first variation’s main theme then is shared by the cello and first violin. The second variation offers a dialogue between the first and second violins. The third variation is more serene.  

The third movement, a Scherzo, begins with pizzicato plucking by all four strings. Then the cello introduces a four-note motif, followed by the viola which offers a three-note phrase incorporating a trill. These two motifs then undergo a series of variations in many combinations. The Finale begins with a clanging motif introduced by all four instruments. There ensue choppy phrases, angular in shape. When the coda is reached, Beethoven springs a surprise on us. The coda begins in pianissimo, in C Major, and the pulse slows down noticeably. There is, however, a subdued excitement in this coda, which brings this string quartet to a close.  

The Takács Quartet’s Beethoven Cycle will conclude in April with performances on Saturday, April 8, and Sunday, April 9, in Hertz Hall.