Bartok String Quartets 1, 3 & 5 (Takacs)

[Bryn]

With so many (far, far too many) Radio 3 programmes now only available at low data rate via the iPlayer's on demand facility, there is one major new exception. Tonight's Live in Concert has recently been posted, and it's at 320kbps aac-lc, i.e. the full HD Sound rate. Let's hope this is a sign of things to come, and not just an oversight.

[johnb]

That's very interesting, Bryn - and it will also be interesting to see how things develop in the weeks ahead. Who know, they might introduce 320 kbps as a permanent feature of LA and use the HE-AAC 56 kbps for the low bandwidth version.

(It is especially welcome as there was a nasty glitch in the live HD stream of the concert.)

I have the Takacs recording - but there is always an extra immediacy when hearing a live performance and I had already 'booked' tonight as the concert of the week.

[Bryn]

Unfortunately John, I find the same glitches which messed up the HD Sound version of 1st Quartet at the time of broadcast are also very much there in the On Demand file. Ah well, we can't win them all.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

I hadn't spotted that they are putting progs on the iplayer at low bit rates Bryn. Looking thru my recent downloads and just going by file sizes, I've noticed 2 Jazz on 3s, a Late Junction, many Lunchtime Concerts, several Composer of the Weeks, a World on 3 and a World Routes which are obviously at very low bit rates.

Tonight's Takacs concert is taking me a long time to download because it is at such a high bit rate!

[johnb]

Bryn, it might be something earlier in the chain - I seem to recall a glitch while I was listening via DAB (... don't ask).

[Norfolk Born]

Page 138 of the current 'Radio Times':
7.30 Bartok String Quartet No 1; String Quartet No 3
7.45 Music Interval
8.05 Bartok String Quartet No 5
10.00 Night Waves

[DracoM]

Apart from the sound engineers at QEH, did the Takacs actually play Bartok?

[Bryn]

Bryn, it might be something earlier in the chain - I seem to recall a glitch while I was listening via DAB (... don't ask).

Agreed, John. The brief series of glitches do sound rather like a connection weakness, but one hitting both channels, so late in the path.

[Bryn]

Apart from the sound engineers at QEH, did the Takacs actually play Bartok?

They did indeed. And how!

[Tapiola]

I only caught the 5th Quartet last night and was riveted throughout - from the intense angularities of the outer movements to the bleached, almost vibrato-less, tones of the 2nd movement chorale and the authentic Magyr stamp throughout. Personally, I would have liked more prominence to be given to the 'whirlpool' at the very centre of the work - it was very difficult to hear in any detail - but overall I found this performance gripping.

[DracoM]

Bryn

My question was a just a bit ironic. Until Tapiola came on, no-one had talked about the performance at all! And I agree with every word said on that posting.

[johnb]

Bryn

My question was a just a bit ironic

The word that I would have used is 'snide'. Of course, in that post, you only commented on what other people had posted, not on the concert itself.

[johnb]

Out of curiosity I have done a quick scan of the bitrates which have been used for Radio Listen Again over the last few days.

The results strike me as bizarre (though I might well have made errors here and there) and I have raised a separate thread for the topic.

[Tapiola]

Any views on the extraordinary interruption towards the end of the 5th Quartet's finale? Bartok writes a sickly diatonic phrase in 1st violin, with oom-cha tonic/dominant accompaniment, before rendering this tune a semitone higher with the original harmony underneath.

Bartok's use of the grotesque is well known (Concerto for Orchestra - 4th movement, 6th Quartet's Burletta and March, Divertimento for Strings - Finale, etc). Paul Griffiths suggests that this is a moment of self-mockery, which, if true, must be unique in Bartok's oeuvre.

[Bryn]

Tapiola, 'explanations' for that passage are many and various. Griffiths was by no means the originator of the version which he puts forward. Abram Loft, for instance, mentions a couple alternatives in his notes associated with the Fine Arts Quartet's 1959 recordings (my introduction to these glorious quartets). It has even been suggested that the joke was an ironic comment by Bartok of his giving up of piano teaching earlier in the year of the quartet's composition.

John, I have cheated and pasted in the approx. 22 second passage hit by the glitches from a rip of the Decca CDs. It is not, of course, perfect, but better than the glitches and, to my amazement, barely noticeable as an edit. I did not even need to adjust the gain level.