BaL 14.11.20 - Mendelssohn: String Quartet no. 6 in F minor Op.80

[vinteuil]

Hmm. For me, the consigning of the Eroica Quartet to the reverence library spoke volumes for the lack of sympathy of this reviewer had for what the coomposer had in mind as far as performance practice is concerned. Instead of taking the bull by the horns she quietly put it down with her modernist stun gun.

... tho' she did have the grace to say she wd like to work at this more to re-calibrate her ears to 'get' the sound world involved. And I think Mr McGregor (bless'im - or was it Natasha?) noted that this was a sound world that derived from what came before rather than a retrospective view from a later Romantic perspective. So credit to her/them for recognizing some of the issues...

[Alison]

... tho' she did have the grace to say she wd like to work at this more to re-calibrate her ears to 'get' the sound world involved. And I think Mr McGregor (bless'im - or was it Natasha?) noted that this was a sound world that derived from what came before rather than a retrospective view from a later Romantic perspective. So credit to her/them for recognizing some of the issues...

[kernelbogey]

I liked the way Natasha referred repeatedly to 'the listeners': it made it less of an inward-facing dialogue.

[visualnickmos]

I liked the way Natasha referred repeatedly to 'the listeners': it made it less of an inward-facing dialogue.

Yes, she did. I thought it was a good BaL (two-hander notwithstanding) from an accomplished reviewer.

[teamsaint]

Just having a listen to a few of the performances mentioned above and on the show.

There is a valedictory bittersweetness to the second movement that must be hard to get just right. Of the ones I have heard, the Eroica seem to find the most appropriate feel, “ Dancing with tears in my eyes” is how it seems to me.

I liked the Ebene a lot, would be happy to have a copy, but there is something in the sound ( and performance? ) that feels a bit less that crystal clear. One of the better album covers though, which actually, now I think about it, might make a difference if one was really choosing a single disc to add to the library.

Enjoyed the show, I thought it was better for the reviewer actually drawing AMG into the discusssion, rather than him feeling he had to dive as he saw fit.

[gradus]

Just having a listen to a few of the performances mentioned above and on the show.

There is a valedictory bittersweetness to the second movement that must be hard to get just right. Of the ones I have heard, the Eroica seem to find the most appropriate feel, “ Dancing with tears in my eyes” is how it seems to me.

I liked the Ebene a lot, would be happy to have a copy, but there is something in the sound ( and performance? ) that feels a bit less that crystal clear. One of the better album covers though, which actually, now I think about it, might make a difference if one was really choosing a single disc to add to the library.

Enjoyed the show, I thought it was better for the reviewer a tually drawing AMG into the discusssion, rather than him feeljng he had to dive as he saw fit.

Having listened to the Ebene recording the sound stuck me as vivid and immediate and I didn't detect any of the gallic huskiness in the playing that the reviewer identified but these things are so often dependent on the ears doing the detecting!

[teamsaint]

Having listened to the Ebene recording the sound stuck me as vivid and immediate and I didn't detect any of the gallic huskiness in the playing that the reviewer identified but these things are so often dependent on the ears doing the detecting!

Might try it again on the better kit, G , and and see if it matches you high rating on there. I didn’t hear the comment about gallic huskiness, but I sort of get that from it, I think.

Just listening to my Sharon quartet recording, and I like their second movement .

[Edgy 2]

I don’t know these. A go to?!?!?

Most certainly BBM

but who won ?

[Alison]

Most certainly BBM

but who won ?

Ebène

[Edgy 2]

Ebène

Thanks chuck

[silvestrione]

Enjoyed the show, I thought it was better for the reviewer actually drawing AMG into the discussion, rather than him feeling he had to dive as he saw fit.

Absolutely. I thought she was a very good broadcaster and BAL presenter, also drawing us into the discussion once or twice ('I wonder what listeners will think here', or similar).

[jayne lee wilson]

MENDELSSOHN BaL OP80

This overview was pretty good - quite a wide range of recordings commented upon with clarity and articulacy - the final choice of the Ébène Quartet seemed fair enough according to the excerpts we heard, and stood up well against my own favoured references in later comparisons: a fine record, though I find their Allegro assai a bit too frantic; the Eroicas bring out the rhythmic stresses better here. I still prefer the lighter, purer, less rhetorical textures and phrasing of the Leipzigers too. For me the Romantic-agony and vibrato is overplayed in the Ébène reading.
So, a shame that the Leipzig Quartet was overlooked; glad that the Eroicas were recommended though, if a little compartmentalised. Its a truly great performance in whatever category. But isn’t it a rather dated comment that “the sound can take some getting used to” of period instruments in 2020?

One or two comments from Natasha Loges were open to question.
First, she said that sonata form was “the landmark form of the 19th Century”.
It is very hard to justify such a statement.
Insofar as it belongs to any century it would surely have to be the 18th, where it matured through the various symphonic structural refinements of Mozart, Haydn and others in chamber and orchestral repertoire. Through the 19th, it was more a case of elaboration into ever freer developmental and cyclical structures. This Op.80 1st Movement is itself very fluid and compressed, has no repeat, and is based on an elaborate thematic complex with at least four main ideas.

The description of the finale as “relentless minor key ranting” seemed very inapt too. It has the character of a Schubertian scurrying away into despair as in Death and the Maiden, the D784 Sonata, or even a Berliozian Ride to the Abyss. Like the Op.80 finale, these remarkable movements seem to be at once an attempt to flee from the darkness, and the devastating discovery that it is, in fact, inescapable.
“Ranting” was poor choice of words, I felt.
She also described it as “the antithesis of classical poise” - but surely it is more the successor to the classical sturm und drang tradition, after the Baroque empfindsamkeit, of several Haydn symphonic movements e.g. in 39, 44, or 49, or Schubert’s 4th; or the formal sonata-based intensities of Mozart’s G Minor Quintet and D Minor Quartet. (Compare the K421 Minuet with the Allegro assai of the Op.80….).
In a tradition of such classical expressions, rather than the antithesis of such.

It’s never a bad idea to reference Mendelssohn’s own 1st Symphony in this regard either. Try the first movement or finale. Not to mention the A minor Op.13 Quartet - Mendelssohn’s first: the searing recitative at the start of the finale….….in fact, the minor key intensity so pressurised and predominant in Op.80 was in Mendelssohn’s stylistic range from early on.

[Beresford]

I would like to hear views on the Emerson's version - a previous generation's Romantic-agony and vibrato perhaps, or is it that they were trying to put a bit more heft into the mix? I am not familiar with the piece, but Mendelssohn's quartets can sound to me, as a newbie, a little like more relaxed Beethoven, so perhaps they gain from an influx of energy, which the Emersons and the Ébène seem to do.

[visualnickmos]

Might try it again on the better kit, G , and and see if it matches you high rating on there. I didn’t hear the comment about gallic huskiness, but I sort of get that from it, I think.

Just listening to my Sharon quartet recording, and I like their second movement .

Is that from the rather nice 'Mendelssohn Complete chamber Music' on Brilliant Classics? It is a very good set, I reckon. One of the cello sonatas, with Christoph Eschenbach (piano) is particularly stunning.

[jayne lee wilson]

I would like to hear views on the Emerson's version - a previous generation's Romantic-agony and vibrato perhaps, or is it that they were trying to put a bit more heft into the mix? I am not familiar with the piece, but Mendelssohn's quartets can sound to me, as a newbie, a little like more relaxed Beethoven, so perhaps they gain from an influx of energy, which the Emersons and the Ébène seem to do.

Op.13, actually No.1, a profound masterpiece of remarkable emotional complexity, shows Mendelssohn facing up to the Beethovenian late-quartet inheritance with great intensity and originality, even employing a slow introduction in the unusually integrated manner of Beethoven's Op.130 - and taking this further still. He found his own voice quickly as the generally lighter moods of Op.12 (No.2!) clearly show.

The Op.44 set is mature Mendelssohn from perhaps the most contented time of his life, so tend to be more relaxed joyful and replete; but even here the shadows are not far away: try No.1, with its surreal, fleet-footed scherzo(**) and anguished slow movement. Then the Op.80, this intense tragic inspiration, and yet.... somehow it goes back to the fountainhead, those earlier intensities... a prodigious talent is not always easy to live with. Too much too young......when you know you can do so much, so early, how do you cope with that as you age? The energies can enervate as well as inspire.

He was too great an artist ever to be complacent in whatever times of happiness came his way; and certainly never from a technical point of view: he was far more innovative in his symphonic structures than many realise even now.

(**)These very imaginative, very rhythmical scherzi characters are something Mendelssohn made all his own, not just in the Midsummer Nights Dream)