Takács Quartet

July 27, 2023 at PDT

Dvořák: String Quartet, Op. 106 - Coleridge-Taylor: Fantasiestücke

Coupling a late masterwork by the great Czech composer Dvořák with a little-known suite by the celebrated Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is typically inventive programming by the Takács Quartet.

Dvořák completed his String Quartet No. 13 in G major, Op. 106 late in 1895, writing on the manuscript score that it was “the first composition after my second return from America.” For the composer, his time in the US as director of New York’s National Conservatory of Music had been a mixed blessing. While he had enjoyed acclaim and written several great works inspired by his time there, he had suffered homesickness and, by 1895, his inspiration was beginning to dry up.

With his G major Quartet, his invention returned at full flow, as you can hear in the first movement (“Allegro moderato”) with its unexpected and playful key changes. But in the second movement (“Adagio ma non troppo”) he strikes a new depth of feeling, as Takács’s lead violinist Edward Dusinberre describes: “There’s pain and suffering, and a sense of transcendence and loss. Going home is a complex thing—it’s not all joyful and upbeat.”

Coleridge-Taylor, like many British composers near the turn of the 20th century, was very much influenced by Dvořák, which makes the pairing of the Dvořák with his Fantasiestücke, Op. 5 on this album seem quite natural. Yet as Dusinberre points out, it also highlights Coleridge-Taylor’s individual qualities: “Brahms might have been a little bit envious of the way Coleridge-Taylor creates a tremendous richness of sounds without making the texture too dense. It can be quite transparent, and that’s a very hard thing to do in quartets.”

Second violinist, Harumi Rhodes, describes the Fantasiestücke as “five beautiful little gems”. As a string quartet, we’re used to playing these 30 to 45-minute works, and so it’s refreshing and fun to be able to sink into these works as individual vignettes, which are almost like poems in the immediacy of their color and character. Yet when you put all five movements together, it’s quite a substantial work of about 20 minutes.”

For Rhodes, Coleridge-Taylor’s skill is his ability instantly to conjure an atmosphere: “the first movement is a beautiful example of that. The way it opens, just the very first note the cello plays, immediately your heart stops and you think that you’ve literally entered an incredibly magical space.”

10 Tracks

May 28, 2020 at PDT

Beethoven: The Late String Quartets

The Takács Quartet’s Beethoven cycle dates back to the early 2000s, when it became an instant, award-winning classic. Beethoven: The Late String Quartets, from 2004, is a magnificent achievement—the fruit of many years spent living with complex and profound music—and reveals something new every time you return to it. The Takács are masters of these scores: Attentive to texture, detail, and the importance of each line, they’re wonderfully in tune with Beethoven’s far-seeing vision. Even the silences between the notes seem to be full of intensity. It all results in a rich and rewarding listen, which has been beautifully recorded.

31 Tracks

May 30, 2024 at PDT

Schubert: String Quartets, D. 112 & 887

Schubert’s last string quartet, the G Major, D887 (1826), predates his deeply poignant final chamber work, the String Quintet, yet rivals it both in terms of scale and ambition.

Its jagged motifs and often unstable harmonies have led several writers to compare the work to Beethoven’s innovative late quartets. Yet, the expressive melodies—particularly the one played by the lead violin and then cello early in the first movement—are highly characteristic of Schubert. More unusual is his widespread use of a technique more typical of orchestral string playing: a rapid shivering or “scrubbing” of the bow over a succession of notes, known as tremolo.

The Takács vary these tremolos, creating quite different atmospheres. Sometimes it’s a barely perceptible background—sometimes smoky, sometimes a shimmering haze—to a poignant theme; but in the initially decorous “Andante un poco moto” second movement, it becomes a baleful, threatening cloud of sound, raw anger breaking through a conventional expression of grief.

The Takács are likewise sensitive to the sharp accents which punctuate the lightly dancing “Scherzo,” and the unpredictable harmonic progressions of the final “Allegro assai.”

The teenage Schubert’s B flat Major, D112 also has moments of darkness, but also a great deal of charm as in the Haydn-style “Menuetto,” which the Takács as veteran performers of that composer’s work play with fluency and wit.

8 Tracks

December 31, 2016 at PST

Beethoven: Complete String Quartets

71 Tracks

November 6, 1995 at PST

Bartók: The 6 String Quartets

23 Tracks

December 31, 1987 at PST

Dohnányi: Piano Quintet - Piano Sextet

8 Tracks

September 30, 2006 at PDT

Schubert: String Quartets No. 14 "Death and the Maiden" & No. 13 "Rosamunde"

By 1824 Schubert was already suffering from the illness which killed him four years later, aged just 31. Anxiety over his predicament spilled out into the String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, named “Death and the Maiden” after the Schubert song which provided the melody for the slow movement. The Takács Quartet vividly catch the existential anxiety of the work’s dramatic opening movement, and bring an incisive technical control to the frenetic scurryings of the hell-for-leather finale.

The melancholy of the String Quartet No. 13 in A minor is of a gentler, if no less vulnerable nature. The Takács players differentiate it carefully from the more expressionistic D minor quartet, drawing out a tender poetry from the slow movement before nurturing a graceful strain of optimism in the elegantly played finale.

8 Tracks

December 31, 1998 at PST

Dvořák: Piano Quintet, String Quartet

8 Tracks

May 28, 2020 at PDT

Beethoven: The Early String Quartets

24 Tracks

September 5, 1993 at PDT

Schubert: String Quartets Nos. 13 "Rosamunde" & 14 "Death and the Maiden"

8 Tracks

December 31, 1995 at PST

Borodin - Smetana: String Quartet No. 2 - String Quartet No. 1 "From My Life"

8 Tracks

April 30, 1988 at PDT

Haydn: String Quartets, Op. 76 Nos. 1-3

12 Tracks

October 4, 1989 at PDT

Haydn: String Quartets, Op. 76 Nos. 4-6

12 Tracks

August 31, 1991 at PDT

Brahms: Piano Quintet; String Quartet No. 3

8 Tracks

December 31, 1991 at PST

Mozart: String Quintet Nos. 2 & 3, K. 515 &, K. 516

9 Tracks

May 28, 2020 at PDT

Elgar & Beach: Piano Quintets

6 Tracks

April 30, 2013 at PDT

Schumann: String Quartets, Op. 41, Nos. 1 & 2

8 Tracks

July 31, 1990 at PDT

Brahms: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2

8 Tracks

July 31, 1991 at PDT

Dvorak: String Quartets Nos. 12 "American" & 14; 5 Bagatelles

13 Tracks

September 28, 2017 at PDT

Dvořák: String Quartet, Op. 105; String Quintet, Op. 97 "American"

Soon after starting up in Budapest in 1975, the Takács Quartet became world-famous, and despite a later move to America and personnel changes, that reputation has never slipped. You can hear why in these recordings, where every shade of Dvořák’s non-stop musical invention is perfectly captured.

In 1892, Dvořák went with his family to America, to teach at New York’s National Conservatory. They also visited the town of Spillville in Iowa, where there was a Czech community, and some Native American musicians came to play. Dvořák’s instant and delighted response was his String Quintet Op. 97; the second movement starts with the second viola imitating native drumming (a moment brilliantly captured here by Lawrence Power).

Back home in Prague two years later, Dvořák composed the String Quartet Op. 105; the musical mood here is more restless, shifting between darkness and light, as the Takács players beautifully convey.

8 Tracks

August 12, 1991 at PDT

The Six String Quartets Dedicated to Joseph Haydn

24 Tracks

October 4, 1998 at PDT

Schubert: Trout Quintet / Wolf: Italian Serenade / Mozart: Eine kleine Nachtmusik

10 Tracks

October 28, 2021 at PDT

Felix & Fanny Mendelssohn: String Quartets

It’s common these days to present the music of siblings Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn side by side, if only to demonstrate how well Fanny’s neglected works bear the comparison. But it’s not often done so thoughtfully or meaningfully as on this album, which surveys their achievements in the medium of the string quartet.

With Fanny there was just the one, composed with Beethovenian passion and a free approach to form that her more rule-bound brother disapproved of. But it makes a neat fit with the first and last of Felix’s acknowledged output: the early A Minor, written when he was a teenager, and the dark, disconsolate F Minor, written just after Fanny’s death and very much in memoriam. The Takács Quartet notes the grief judiciously, without indulgence. And their playing overall is measured, elegant, with an acute intelligence.

12 Tracks

March 7, 2024 at PST

Takács Assad Labro

7 Tracks