The Belcea String Quartet, which has released a two-CD set of Bartok, comes to the Gardner Museum on Sunday.
(sheila rock)
Classical Notes
A quartet's bold exploration of Bartok
The Belcea String Quartet, which has released a two-CD set of Bartok, comes to the Gardner Museum on Sunday.
(sheila rock)
The Gardner Museum has a strong record of enlisting rising talent for its concert series, giving audiences a chance to hear exceptional musicians in the intimate confines of the museum's Tapestry Room before they make the jump to larger venues. One such group, the Belcea String Quartet, is there on Sunday.
The Belcea has been around since 1994, when the quartet formed at London's Royal College of Music, and its reputation has been established in England for some time. Wider recognition has begun to come over the last few years, chiefly via a series of recordings made for the EMI label. Among them are traversals of works by Britten, Debussy, Ravel, and Mozart notable for their refined sound and technical proficiency. Three of the Belcea's members also perform a charged, if perplexing, version of Schubert's "Trout" Quintet whose pianist is the noted British composer Thomas Adès.
Their newest release is a two-CD set of Bartok's six string quartets. Its appearance says something both about the ensemble and about the music. When Bartok died, in 1945, his work was largely unknown territory, the quartets in particular. A little more than 60 years later, Bartok has moved from the musical periphery almost to the center. The quartets, once thought exotic, are now seen as the most significant body of chamber music written in the 20th century. They are the map of his musical development, much as Beethoven's are, and an increasingly important rite of passage for developing ensembles.
This puts listeners in the happy position of being surrounded by a myriad of recordings of these endlessly captivating works. Sixty years ago, the Juilliard String Quartet - Bartok pioneers extraordinaire - made a still-prized recording of the quartets that was the first to unveil their breathtaking originality. There are now about 20 sets of the six quartets available, with many others having come and gone. So crowded is the market that one now has the luxury of wondering how urgently new versions are needed.
The Belcea set is a highly impressive if not definitive entry into this field. The most immediately arresting aspect of the performance is its tonal beauty: Even at its knottiest, the players make Bartok's writing sound opulent. The approach might, at least partially, be a result of the quartet's period of study with the Alban Berg Quartet, the fabled Viennese ensemble that made an art form of tonal refinement.
This isn't to say that the Belcea misses out on the grittier aspects of the composer's language. Rhythms are punchy, and the musicians can slash away at Bartok's thick, widely spaced chords with the best of them. They also pay scrupulous attention to the music's vast array of sonic effects. Their readings may lack some of the expressionistic edge that groups like the Juilliard and Emerson quartets have wrung from this music, but the Belcea's warmer, more Romantic stance pays its own dividends.
They're at their most convincing in the Third, Fourth, and Fifth quartets, which feature the most adroit syntheses of the formal and expressive sides of the composer's imagination. They marshal tremendous energy in each yet never lose sight of Bartok's carefully plotted architecture, and the episodes of "night music" have an appropriately eerie cast. Only in the First and Sixth quartets do they come up somewhat short. The First lacks a spark of vitality, and the group never quite captures the nostalgic sadness surrounding the Sixth's straightforward musical language.
Still, this is a considerable achievement and proof that the Belcea is eminently worth hearing. The group's Gardner program includes the Bartok Third, as well as Haydn's Quartet in D Major from Op. 20 and Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" Quartet. 617-278-5156, gardnermuseum.org
More Messiaen
Celebrations of the Messiaen centenary continue apace. Tonight the Old West Organ Society hosts Jon Gillock, an American organist who studied with Messiaen at the Paris Conservatory. He plays three of the composer's large-scale works: "La Nativité du Seigneur," "Le banquet céleste," and "Apparition de l'église éternelle." Old West Church, 131 Cambridge St. 617-739-1340, oldwestorgansociety.org
Cancellations
Audra McDonald has canceled her May 16 appearance at Sanders Theatre, presented by 
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