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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
November 13, 2009
"With op.20 the historical development of Haydn's quartets reaches its goal; and further development is not progress in any historical sense, but simply the difference between one masterpiece and the next."
Yet, lest one think that Sir Donald Tovey was implying some kind of uniformity from Op.20 onwards, he continues later in the same passage: "if Haydn's career had ended there [with Op.20], nobody could have guessed which of some half-dozen different lines he would have followed up."
With the mature Haydn a string quartet has a veritable cornucopia of music from which to select: Op.20 et. seq. give over 50 works to choose from when programming. Friday's concert by the Lafayette String Quartet offered us four of them: two familiar and two slightly-less-so.
This was an evening which, in many ways, I had been anticipating for several years, ever since it became clear that the Lafayettes had become members of that elite group which understands that there is far more to playing Haydn than simply getting the notes right.
The programme offered us - in chronological sequence - music written over a span of more than twenty years, from Op.20, No.4 to Op.74, No.2, a period during which Haydn's reputation had grown ever more secure and his quartets, in particular, extremely popular.
It would be pointless to enumerate in detail the virtues of each of the quartets on Friday's programme; a few individual moments must be taken to stand for them all.
Op.20, No.4, which opened the evening, was imbued with the "big" sound for which this set is known; but that "bigness" was combined with a sumptuousness of tone, some marvellous sotto voce playing and, in the first movement in particular, some dazzling phrase-passing between the instruments.
I loved the insouciance of the opening movement of Op.33, No.2, the elegantly bucolic scherzo (Haydn used the term in a quartet for the first time in Op.33), the hymn-like theme of the largo.
The sobriquet of this quartet is "The Joke" and, in her commendably to the point (and audible) spoken introduction Pamela Highbaugh Aloni carefully pointed to other comical aspects of the music while omitting to mention the real joke, which, in this case, was on the audience (or most of us), who were fooled into premature applause.
It did mean that the quartet ended in quite genuine and spontaneous laughter - I'm sure Haydn would have approved.
Op.64, No.5, "The Lark" is Haydn's most popular quartet; it may well have been the first I ever heard - it certainly was the first one I ever bought (as a filler, as it happened, on a recording of Schubert's "Death and the Maiden"). I was instantly captivated.
And was again on Friday as I listened to music which seems as perfect as can be, in a performance which could hardly be bettered either, whether it was the bounce in the opening movement or the dizzying tempo of the finale's moto perpetuo.
Nor is there really much I can say about the final work, Op.74, No.2; the slow movement, however, was exquisite and the lighthearted finale was the perfect end to a perfect evening.
It was one of those rare occasions when the event really does live up to the anticipation.
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