Member 'rkyburz' personal survey of Beethoven op.131 recordings

[Guest]

http://rolf-musicblog.blogspot.fr/2012/12/beethoven-string-quartet-op131.html

Always much food for thought in his posts, and metronome markings galore for the anorak brigade.

[Parry1912]

Shame there's no Lindsays or Talich. Perhaps Rolf would have liked those better than some of those he did listen to. He doesn't seem to like too many!

[Bryn]

Shame there's no Lindsays or Talich. Perhaps Rolf would have liked those better than some of those he did listen to. He doesn't seem to like too many!

A very strange assessment of the Artemis. Elsewhere he makes several negative assessments of the employment of vibrato by other quartets. One thing that immediately put me off the Artemis recording was precisely their use of vibrato (not just the employment of vibrato as such but the their particular mode of applying it). The omission of the Talich and both Lindsay sets does seem somewhat remiss.

[Thropplenoggin]

A very strange assessment of the Artemis. Elsewhere he makes several negative assessments of the employment of vibrato by other quartets. One thing that immediately put me off the Artemis recording was precisely their use of vibrato (not just the employment of vibrato as such but the their particular mode of applying it). The omission of the Talich and both Lindsay sets does seem somewhat remiss.

Totally agree. It completely kills the beginning of the opening movement for me, sounding more like a Jimmy Hendrix guitar solo. Bizarrely, this is out of kilter with their generally excellent approach to the other Beethoven quartets.

[rkyburz]

Totally agree. It completely kills the beginning of the opening movement for me, sounding more like a Jimmy Hendrix guitar solo. Bizarrely, this is out of kilter with their generally excellent approach to the other Beethoven quartets.

sorry, can't reply in detail - traveling this week. Just one short note: my ratings are a) subjective, and b) relative. Yes, I would have liked less vibrato (though not necessarily the way Brooklyn Rider does it), I was tempted to cut off a point from one or the other movements in the Artemis performance, and if there had been a recording of the Quatuor Mosaïques, this would almost certainly have happened. The reason why I did not lower their rating in the end (clearly, I rate the Hagen Quartet higher than this early Artemis recording) is that it would have further pushed down quartets such as Endellion ...
And: vibrato is an important aspect, for sure, but for me personally it is at least as important whether an interpretation "speaks to me", and whether an ensemble captures what I perceive as Beethoven's intent.

[rkyburz]

Shame there's no Lindsays or Talich. Perhaps Rolf would have liked those better than some of those he did listen to. He doesn't seem to like too many!

Hi Parry,
just biefly (it's 6:00 a.m. here, and I'm not looking forward to 4 days with serious jet lag):

• I'm not BaL, nor am I trying to be or imitate BaL - and comparing 14 recordings the way I did is already a lot of work
• I think you are mis-reading my ratings: a "3-star" rating is not meant to be bad: that's an "average, good" recording, at a fairly high level: this can be one where I just could not tell why it hould stand out from the others, or possibly one where things that I dislike are balanced by sections / segments where they do stand out. As for my recommendations: why should I recommend a recording that (at a very high level!) is "nothing special"? My rating scale (based on the iTunes * ... ***** rating) does not feature negative values, so in this scale, it's really the recordings with ratings below 3 which I think are flawed (2) or seriously flawed (1). I have once decided for iTunes - that does not imply that I like their rating scheme, but I try to work with it. It's very rough, and so there will be "good 5-star" tracks and "borderline 5-star" tracks.
• So again: I do enjoy listening to recordings with a rating of 3, but I try to point to recordings which I think stand out from this. And: keep in mind that my comments can really only be highlights, and if you read my blogs from top down, you will indeed first see predominantly negaticve comments, as the better recordings are at the bottom). It is hard enough with this not to fall into the "verbiage Bingo trap" that was discussed here recently - of course I still do - heavily, and I do realize that (but keep in mind that my mothertongue is not English or American, it's not even German, but clumsy, Mittelhochdeutsch-derived Swiss German) ... and a Swiss German music blog would really be too much of a "niche product"!

[Thropplenoggin]

Thanks for your feedback, rkyburz.

I certainly appreciate your efforts and am a frequent visitor to the blog. I use it more of a springboard to find other recordings of a particular work and garner information on the recordings you do cover.

BaL is one of my favourite bits of Radio 3 programming, though it's approach to reviewing is far from methodical and often very controversial. But then one has to set some parameters. How could anyone do a reasonable survey of Beethoven's 9th on record in 45 minutes? Where to focus - historic, Romantic, HIP, 21st Century in stellar sound?, Ideally, all four, and without the constraints of a measly 45 minutes.

I believe the French show 'Le Jardin des Critiques' (formerly 'La Tribune des Critiques'), of which forum member Caliban oft sings its praises, selects a smaller number of recordings, which are reviewed 'blind' to avoid prejudice, though surely certain recordings/conductors/orchestras will reveal themselves to certain ears?! It is also a longer programme dedicated to just the survey of a single work (I believe!)

Anyway, keep up the laborious and controversial work.