Beethoven: String Quartets, Vol. 1

Beethoven

String Quartets, Vol. 1 – String Quartets Nos 1, 6, 11, 12; String Quartet in F major, Op. 59 No. 1

Doric String Quartet

Chandos CHAN20298-2   157:57 mins (2 discs)

The Doric String Quartet has already nailed its colours to the mast with well-received recordings of Schumann, Mendelssohn, Purcell and Britten (also Chandos). Now they are beginning to do the same with Beethoven: this double-album is a taster for the complete set, with five works spanning the composer’s early, middle and late periods. And for listeners with long memories – and even short ones – they face stiff competition.

My own memories go back to the recordings laid down in the early ’60s by the Amadeus Quartet, whom I was honoured to welcome to the stage for a concert at my college in Oxford. I still love the sweetness of their cantabile, and their purity of intention. Then I fell in love with the Quartetto Italiano, thanks to the magisterial conviction of their playing. Then it was the Borodin Quartet, with their stately slow movements. One could sense this group’s history through their music – friends with Shostakovich, whose quartet cycle they premiered, they had also played at Stalin’s funeral; for them music really was a matter of life and death. Today there are excellent contenders for the crown.

I have just one reservation about the Dorics’ version, and it concerns the volume of the sound. Sometimes it seems to come from so far away as to be literally almost inaudible, and sometimes it’s in your face. There are times – as in the second movement of Op. 59 No 1, which feels as though it’s conceived spatially – when these fluctuations are appropriate, but on other occasions the line of Beethoven’s thought is arbitrarily interrupted. Is this due to sound engineering?

In all other respects, this cycle has got off to a splendid start, with glorious slow movements, much solo beauty and a finely judged sense of ensemble. 

There are also moments of wit: the way the quartet exits from the Scherzo in Op. 127 is delicately theatrical, as though the performers are taking a last peek through the curtains before scampering off. Michael Church