BEETHOVEN AND HANDEL

posted by James Reel

Here are a couple more reviews I wrote earlier this year for Fanfare: Beethoven chamber music, and Handel organ concertos.

BEETHOVEN String Quartet No. 9 in C, Op. 59/3; String Quintet in C, Op. 29 * Kuijken Ens * CHALLENGE CC72181 (multichannel hybrid SACD: 65:14)

One big happy family—that’s the impression left by these Beethoven performances featuring two generations of Kuijkens. I gave it a corporate title to keep the headnote under control, but group doesn’t really have a name; it consists of violinist Sigiswald Kuijken and his cellist-brother, Wieland; Sigiswald’s violist wife, Marleen Thiers; and their daughters, violinist Veronica and violist Sara. They play well together, in more ways than one.

This is immediately apparent in their joyful treatment of the first movement of the third “Razumovsky” Quartet. (Pedantic note: You can’t just call this the “Razumovsky” Quartet, because the title is applied to all three works of Op. 59, so you must specify whether it’s the first, second, or third. Similarly, you can’t just refer to Schubert’s Ninth Symphony as “the Great,” as if to convey how big or wonderful it is, because the adjective is linked to the key: “Great C-major,” to differentiate it from Schubert’s earlier, “Little C-major” Symphony.) Throughout the disc, there’s abundant evidence of like-minded musicians taking great pleasure in fine music. The often-snubbed Quintet, by the way, is given here in its two-cello version, and comes across as a much stronger work than usual.

The Kuijkens are best known as period-instrument players, but here (as in an earlier Debussy release, apparently not reviewed in Fanfare) they take up modern instruments. Still, they tend to reserve vibrato for held notes and dynamic swells, and they keep their textures clear. The interpretation is not highly emotive, yet the music is by no means underplayed. The playing is clean and incisive, but the overall affect is not high-strung. Compare, for example, the Prazák Quartet’s treatment of Op. 59/3 in its SACD survey of the Beethoven quartets. The Prazáks are recorded at a greater distance, with a narrower aural deployment of the instruments, yet their performance is “bigger.” After the Kuijkens, they seem a bit rushed and frantic, and some of their attacks have greater bite, although there’s nothing soft about the Kuijkens.

There’s nothing unusual about any of the tempo choices; what distinguishes these performances more than anything is the wonderful variety of dynamics, carefully applied, without going to extremes. In the Quintet, despite what might be expected from musicians immersed in the 18th century, the Kuijkens don’t go out of their way to Classicize the score. Indeed, in terms of weight and expression, they link it firmly to Beethoven’s middle quartets. There’s drama here, as in the big episode near the end of the second movement, but the drama isn’t as explosive as it might be at the hands of today’s harder-edged American groups. All in all, this is an exceptionally agreeable and engaging disc, with attractively realistic, fairly close sonics. James Reel

HANDEL Organ Concertos, Op. 4 * Richard Egarr (org); Academy of Ancient Music * HARMONIA MUNDI HMU 807446 (hybrid multichannel SACD: 71:35)

Between us, Andrew Quint and I favorably reviewed PentaTone’s four-disc, multichannel reissue of Daniel Chorzempa’s Handel organ-concerto survey, originally for Philips, in Fanfare 26:5, 27:2, and 28:1. That is a highly desirable series, and has been for more than 30 years, but now Richad Egarr and his Academy of Ancient Music are embarking on a set that should be highly competitive, and interpretively quite different.

The initial disc collects all six of the Op. 4 concertos, and suggests that Egarr and Harmonia Mundi will probably be able to compress the entire series onto three discs. In terms of sonics and performance, Chorzempa is brighter and more in-your-face than Egarr; the latter turns in thoughtful, often darker readings on a sweet-toned little organ that contrasts interestingly with the natural astringency of the period-instrument orchestra (it should be noted that today’s Academy of Ancient Music is far less nasal and honking than it was in the 1970s and ’80s). Making up for the color limitations of the organ (Egarr, like Handel, uses a fairly modest four-stop portative instrument), the musicians employ a mean-tone tuning system that adds some harmonic sparks when certain keys scrape against each other. Egarr’s dense level of ornamentation sounds free, not fussy, and the overall effect is probing and ruminative.

One potentially controversial aspect of this disc is the performance of the sixth concerto, usually played on the harp. What might cause a stir is not the fact that it’s re-assigned to the organ, as is not uncommon, but the nature of the performance itself. On the theory that the organ is essentially a “box of recorders,” Egarr has eliminated the real recorders from the orchestra, and extended throughout the work Handel’s first-movement idea of muting the violins and having the lower strings play pizzicato. The interpretation itself, including Egarr’s playing, is muted and slow, eliminating the work’s customary sparkle. In exchange, we get greater sensuality.

The sonic image is clear and natural, with the organ seeming to be placed a bit closer to us than the orchestra. This promises to be a fine series, and a real interpretive contrast to the more chipper Chorzempa. James Reel