MUSIC REVIEW | TAKACS QUARTET

PROGRAM OF BEETHOVEN'S STRING QUARTETS BRINGS AUDIENCE TO ITS FEET EARLY

Published: Monday, April 18, 2005

FEATURES - LIFE 04D

By Jennifer Hambrick

FOR THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

There were shouts of "bravo'' and the beginnings of a standing ovation at the Takacs Quartet concert Saturday evening.

And that was after only the first half.

The Takacs Quartet treated the near-capacity audience at the Southern Theatre to some of its Grammy-winning renditions of Beethoven.

The concert, the last of the 2004-05 Chamber Music Columbus season, marked the third Columbus appearance of the pre-eminent, half-Hungarian, half-British ensemble.

Most audiences know Beethoven as a symphonist, particularly as the composer of the Ninth Symphony. But his 17 string quartets are just as important in the history of this genre as his nine symphonies are in the history of the symphony.

Beethoven took the string quartet to new expressive heights after Haydn and Mozart, at once paying homage to his predecessors and often wildly breaking with tradition. The result is a body of music that in its technical and interpretive demands stands as Goliath to every string quartet's David.

Saturday's program featured one quartet from each of three periods identified by early Beethoven historiographers -- though resisted by more-recent music scholars -- in the development of Beethoven's style. The placement of the early quartet Op. 18, No. 6, the middle quartet Op. 59, No. 3, and the late quartet Op. 135 on the same program actually emphasized the indistinct boundaries between the alleged style periods.

Beethoven completed the Op. 18 string quartets -- his first essays in the genre -- in 1800. Stunning solo playing from the first violinist, Edward Dusinberre, graced the third movement Adagio of the sixth quartet in this group. The full ensemble also used its command of soft dynamics to great effect, capturing in a hushed timelessness the labyrinthine harmonic turns of the introduction to the fourth movement, La Malinconia .

The same effect was sublime in the third movement, Lento assai , of Beethoven's last quartet, Op. 135, and in the brooding introduction to this work's final movement. With its slow introduction followed by a lively main section, this movement mirrors the design of the finale of Op. 18, No. 6, and blurs the divide between the early and late Beethoven styles.

Beethoven composed the concert's last number, the quartet Op. 59, No. 3, in 1806 on a commission from the Russian ambassador to Vienna, Count Andreas Kirillovich Razumovsky. The devilish, fuguelike writing of the fourth movement Allegro molto sizzled in the hands of the Takacs players, bringing the concert to a stunning conclusion and the audience to its feet.