Author: 459856pwpadmin

I grew up
listening to Beethoven.  Actually I
probably grew up listening to Beethoven, Bach and Brahms, but it is the
Beethoven that I remember.   
I remember my father placing his LP’s lovingly on the turntable, the
large speaker he had made from a kit. 
I remember how he set the pressure on the stylus as lightly as possible,
so that the needle would just kiss the surface of the LP:  just enough to extract the sound
without wearing out the LP.  I
don’t actually know if you wear out LPs but I remember that is what I was
told.  I remember learning not to
run through the house, not to allow a door to slam, that such noises would
cause the old wooden boards to shake and the needle to skip.  Scratching Beethoven was a capitol
offense.

 Later, when
I was finally allowed to take the piano lessons I had been craving since I was
4 or 5 (I was 16), my piano teacher wanted me to perform a piece by Beethoven
in a competition.  I played it the
way I had heard it on my dad’s recordings.  But my teacher told me that was wrong, that it needed to be
more gentle and melodic and I learned to play it her way.  My father told me my teacher was wrong
and I was torn.  I always aimed to
please, too uncertain of my own tastes and opinions, too eager to please.  In the competition I played for my
teacher.   The judges said I
could have won if I understood Beethoven better, if I had played the piece my
father’s way.

 The music of
Beethoven was like a part of me; but a part of me I am not sure I ever fully
understood.  It was there, I recognized
it, but I did not know it.

 Years later,
G and I went to a series of concerts at Lincoln Center.  It was 1997 and the Emerson Quartet was
presenting the complete Beethoven Quartet Cycle, with other works, in a series
of 8 concerts. I was in heaven. 
When the cycle was released on CD, G and I bought the set.  For years, when we listened to a
recording Beethoven string quartets, we listened to the Emerson play them.

Just this
past week I have listened to them again, and I have made a rather shocking
discovery.  I don’t like the
Emerson Quartet’s performance of the Beethoven String Quartets, at least I
don’t like the recorded performances. 
I don’t like them at all, with, perhaps, the exception of No. 11 in F
minor, but that one quartet is not enough to redeem a series of recordings that
seem emotionally void, empty, and vapid, even if precisely and expertly
performed.

I am forced
to wonder what I was listening to. 
Was I listening, actually listening, or I was listening through the ear
of memory, through the haze of the desire, through the fog of expectation?  I really don’t know. The truth is often
listened to these CDs in the car, when we were travelling somewhere, and the
car is a less than ideal venue for music.  The noise of the car, the road, conversations, the
distractions of driving — listening to music in the car can be as much about
expectation as what is actually heard.

It came to
my attention, while sorting through our CD collection for an upcoming project,
that we have two complete sets of the Beethoven String Quartets, and another
set of just the late quartets.    This came as a bit of a surprise; I expected
some overlap, just not quite so much. 
Of course I had to listen to them to see if we actually needed all three
recordings.

The entire exercise makes me question if I would have liked the
Emerson’s rendition more if it had been the first recording I listened to.  But it wasn’t. 

First I
listened to a recording of the late quartets by the Alexander quartet.  I purchased it after a concert in which
I had been completely blown away by the music.  They performed Beethoven and Shostakovich and I bought
recordings of each.  I recall that
G asked me at the time why I needed more Beethoven when we had the Emerson at home,
and I had said that I didn’t recall the Emerson sounding like “that” meaning
the concert we had just heard.  But
after I got home, and listened to the recording a few times, it was just filed
away and forgotten.

 My loss.

 I was
immediately struck by the emotion and power the Alexander Quartet brought to the
music.  The music was gripping:  sometimes shockingly aggressive,
sometimes meltingly tender and filled with humanity.  I sat on the edge of my chair, gripping the armrests,
remembering how I felt exactly this same way at the performance two years
before.  Admittedly there were
times when the players seemed to skim past a few notes and this was even more
evident when I compared the playing to that of the Emerson.  But I seem to be a person who reacts to
music on an emotional, almost visceral, level, and to me, the emotional depth of
the performance seemed to far surpass the minor imperfections.

 Listening to
the same piece as recorded by the Emerson was a disappointment.  Yes, the notes were recognizably the
same.  But the music seemed cold
and almost superficial; they were playing Beethoven but it was only a shadow of
Beethoven.  The overwhelming
spirituality of the 15^th quartet was particularly lacking.  My mind wandered; in fact there were
times when the performance seemed almost boring.  The music was a background melody to the landscape of the
mind.  There was nothing
compelling, nothing to make me take notice.

 At this
point I turned to the third set of Beethoven String Quartets in our
possession.   This set was by
the Takacs Quartet and I was eager to see how they compared in this case.  In terms of the late quartets at least,
they came in second best. Technically I think the playing was tighter and even
richer than the Emerson, and there was emotion and depth to the performance, but my heart had already been won over  by the pure  power of the Alexander Quartet.

 I didn’t
stop there however.  I went on to
compare the Emerson and Takacs in selections from the early and middle
quartets.  Here the Takacs really
surpassed the Emerson in terms of power, emotion, and precision.  Both groups seem better suited to the
earlier quartets than to the late quartets.  Even so, the recording by the Takacs Quartet displayed a
strong balance of precision, emotion and grace, at times seeming almost edgy in
its strength.  The Emerson
occasionally seemed scattered and disconnected; in fact I think their
performances were superior on the late quartets, at least as compared to their
own performances of the early quartets. 

 I am no
longer particularly interested in the Emerson Quartet's Beethoven recordings,
but I will keep them because G adores them and I am not going to force my point
of view on him.  Instead of
eliminating a set of CDs it seems I will have to add more, because now I want
to hear the Alexander Quartet’s version of the early and middle quartets.  If I had not heard the Alexander Quartet, the Takacs Quartet's recording of the Beethoven String Quartets would be my favorite, and they are incredibly beautiful, capturing the range of emotions found in the music, and yet they are not enough….for me.

But I have heard the Alexander and now I want to find their recordings of the early and middle quartets.  I can understand that they may not be to everyone's taste, but then they are to mine.  But then, I like Mahler too, so obviously outrageous eruptions of emotion are right up my alley.