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Christ Church Cathedral
September 10, 2021
"As a young man, I harbored the populist idea of writing for the public. I learned that the public didn't care. So I decided to write for myself. Since then, people have gotten interested."
The words are those of the American composer Elliott Carter, but could just as easily have been uttered by Ludwig van Beethoven, except that, by and large, the public probably still do not care and, most particularly, they neither know nor care about Beethoven's late quartets.
But 'twas probably ever thus: the vast majority of the human race is simply too busy trying to survive to be able to spend the time to come to terms with music which, never considered "easy listening", still gives even the musical connoisseur pause for thought.
All the more reason, then, to be grateful for the opportunity — in this time of pandemic, climate crisis and the apparent imminent demise of liberal democracy — to hear late Beethoven in person, especially when played as well as it was on Friday evening.
The Emily Carr Quartet played, with the obvious exception of cellist Alasdair Money, standing; while perhaps the most obvious it was far from the most important feature of their performance. Far more salient were their smooth, rich blended sound, the seamless interplay of the four musicians and their unanimity of phrasing. I have been following their progress for most of the decade-and-a-half of their career, during which time they have progressed from being a youthful, wonderfully talented group to the mature, thoughtful ensemble of today, while still maintaining a freshness in their approach to music I thought I knew well.
Friday's concert was a case in point: I can still remember making a special trip to London to buy my first complete set of the Beethoven quartets, some four decades ago, so I think I can claim a reasonable familiarity with the music; nonetheless, in every movement there were details and relationships I have not previously noticed. For me this is a key facet of an absorbing performance of any great music: I do not want to feel comfortable in my previous opinions, I want to feel a sense of discovery and this is something the Emily Carrs offer every time I have heard them.
Admittedly the cavernous cathedral acoustic did have a tendency to blur contrapuntal lines, yet such was the integrity of the playing that it was relatively easy to ignore.
I admit that I spent the first movement of the B flat quartet, Op.130, which opened the concert, simply admiring their playing and thinking how straightforward they made this enigmatic music sound. The fleeting second movement was very quick, but its playful nature had a definitely edgy undertow. The third movement, the first of the quartet's pair of slow movements, was simply lovely, in addition to feeling charmingly consolatory. The alla tedesca had a delicious lilt, while the unearthly beauty of the cavatina superbly conveyed emotions too deep for words. Which is, of course, music's "superpower".
The finale, Beethoven's substitute for the original and the last music he ever completed, had a restrained exuberance, playful yet with an underlying gravity.
That finale was, of course, the composer's replacement for the Große Fuge; in Joseph Kerman's 1966 monograph on the quartets, he devotes four chapters to the late quartets, but the Great Fugue occupies almost an entire chapter by itself.
Opinions on the fugue differ: for Philip Radcliffe it is "best understood, if regarded, not as a highly eccentric fugue, but as a kind of symphonic poem consisting of several contrasted but thematically related sections and containing a certain amount of fugal writing". On the other hand, the title of an article by Warren Kirkendale — "The 'Great Fugue, Op.133': Beethoven's 'Art of Fugue'" — offers an entirely different perspective, seeing the music as Beethoven's "summary of the various fugal techniques".
The listener is probably unconcerned by such niceties, probably being, as Kerman suggests, "stunned" by the very opening which "Beethoven is pleased to miscall Overtura. This section hurls all the thematic versions at the listener's head like a handful of rocks".
Coming directly after the Op.130's new finale, the Overtura burst like a bomb, seeming to summon up the Ninth Symphony's "Oh Freunde, nicht diese töne!" only in reverse: instead of the symphony's abrupt discord yielding to the Ode to Joy, it is as if Beethoven is casting aside joviality for an enterprise of great pith and moment.
Yes, some of the contrapuntal detail was obscured by the acoustic, but what could not be disguised was the intensity and unstoppable momentum of the performance, from the attention-grabbing opening to the impetuous close there was simply no escape, nor could I imagine anybody wanting to.
An outstanding concert.
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