Prism V JS Bach: Chorale Prelude, BWV 668; The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080 – Contrapunctus XIV; Beethoven: String Quartet No. 16 in F, Op. 135; Webern: String Quartet Danish String Quartet ECM 485 8469 59:08 mins
Some eight years in the making, the Danish Quartet’s survey of the Beethoven late quartets reaches journey’s end: ‘last words’ are in order. And not just Beethoven’s quartet swansong Op. 135. Bach has been a constant point of reference throughout the series, and the musicians bring an effortless beatific refinement to an arrangement of the chorale prelude Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit, a work supposedly dictated by Bach from his deathbed. So, at any rate, maintained his son CPE supplementing the incomplete Contrapunctus XIV from The Art of Fugue when the collection was published posthumously.
Contrapunctus XIV itself is included by way of conclusion, as if the quartet is pondering what should be the culmination of Bach’s fugal output were it not that the surviving manuscript breaks off ‘unfinished’. Rather than attempt a completion it’s left hanging in the air, a tantalising ‘what might have been’.
The series’ customary 20th-century companion is Webern’s single-movement String Quartet of 1905, a work suffused with the voluptuous expressionism of his teacher Schoenberg’s sextet Verklärte Nacht, and it’s delivered with expansive insight and lyrical sweep. Op. 135, meanwhile, discloses all the hallmarks of close study, intelligent interrogation and fastidiously calibrated response, that have characterised the performances throughout the cycle. The insouciant opening is lovingly detailed; the Vivace scampers along before the music turns formidably truculent. Sometimes Beethoven’s dramas sound a little too spick and span, but there’s no shortage of tongue-in-cheek menace at the start of the finale. A potent reading, potently illuminated by the contextualising Bach and Webern.
Paul Riley