The
Ysaÿe Quartet
disbanded in 2014, but through the 2000s, it was one of the world's top quartets, and interest in the group's recordings remains strong. So it will be all to the good, for fans and for chamber music lovers in general, to hear this complete
Beethoven
cycle, recorded live in Paris in 2008. The graphics for the album boast that the music was "played without a safety net at the Auditorium of the Musée d'Orsay!" The performances back up the atmosphere this promises, with quick tempos and an edgy mood that must have been difficult to pull off consistently. There were 12 separate concerts, with six pairs spread over a little more than a month, but what strikes the listener is that the
quartet oeuvre is taken as a single unit, with a consistent tone. For the
, the string quartet was the genre in which
pushed to extremes. The
Op. 18
quartets from the composer's early period are taken at a speed that emphasizes the works' formal spirit of innovation; these performances are both fast and big-boned. Sample also the almost frenetic but perfectly controlled fugal finale of the
String Quartet in C major, Op. 59, No. 3
, from the set of
"Rasumovsky" quartets
from the middle period, for an idea of the
Ysaÿe
's intense, high-speed general approach. Only rarely does the group depart from this approach, but it does so in what is arguably the most radical movement in the whole set of 16 quartets, the Lydian-mode slow movement, "Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit" ("Holy Song of Thanks of a Convalescent to the Godhead"), of the
String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132
. Here the
clocks in at more than 21 minutes, substantially longer than average for the movement, and the impact is all the greater due to its contrast with the rest of the work and the rest of the cycle as a whole. Listeners can see whether or not this particular movement works for them, but there is a simultaneous sense of command and surprise throughout, and the fine sound engineering from the museum space suggests that someone had the idea all along of releasing the performances in album form. They work, and they make a strong capstone for the
's recording catalog, if indeed that is what they become. ~ James Manheim