★★★★★
Founded in Budapest in 1975 and on the cusp of its 50th anniversary, the Takacs Quartet has very little to prove. But these players are clearly not content to rest on their (many) laurels. This was a demanding programme of three quartets written to impress, and each was an exacting, engaging, rewarding labour.
The first violinist Edward Dusinberre worked particularly hard in the first item, Haydn’s String Quartet in C Op 54 No 2, originally written for a (fittingly) Hungarian virtuoso. Dusinberre is not the most forthright — after 31 years in the group, he’s a thorough team player — but he did play to the crowd, occasionally raising an eyebrow or two to make sure we were all in on Haydn’s gentle jokes. After the proto-Chopin-esque abandon of the slow movement, he urged despair in the middle of the minuet before shedding sweetness and light in the final movement. Although there, the cellist András Fejer, the quartet’s last remaining original member, ran a close beauty contest with Dusinberre with some tenderly placed accompanying arpeggios.
It was very much a team effort in Britten’s String Quartet No 2, written in part to work his way back into British hearts after having fled to America at the start of the Second World War. Though inspired by Purcell, and premiered at the Wigmore on the baroque composer’s 250th anniversary, it is not a polite petition for re-entry into Blighty but more of a volatile demand. The group let loose. The second violinist Harumi Rhodes and the violist Richard O’Neill, both brilliantly full-blooded, lurched at each other like fighting fowl. The other two mopped their brows after the second movement’s technical frenzy. But their real triumph was in the stretches of serenity that relieve the nearly 20-minute final movement, a set of 21 variations on a spiky theme. The movement is a test of concentration for audience and performer alike but the Takacs players held it throughout so that the final blaze of C major felt entirely earned.
It was a test of co-ordination after the interval in Beethoven’s final string quartet, No 16 Op 135, which lays many Haydn-like tripwires. But the Takacs is a tight unit. Once, when a particularly sinuous melody was passed around it was hard to tell the instruments apart. They returned to well-organised rowdiness in the riotous second movement. The only letdown of the evening was the following glacial movement, where tuning issues surprisingly crept in. But they immediately, miraculously picked up the slack in the final which was pure chiaroscuro. You could almost see Beethoven looking out on the vineyard where he wrote the work, frowning at the sun.
The Takacs Quartet is at the Wigmore Hall on November 14 and at the Assembly Rooms, Bath, on November 15 as part of Bath Mozartfest
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