Beethoven - Late String Quartets
Opp.95, 127, 130-132 & 135
Takács Quartet
Decca 470 8492 (3CD)

Release date January 2005

We don't award stars to CDs in this publication; if we did, the Takács Quartet's Beethoven cycle would get a heavenload of them. The final group of five quartets constitutes the apogée of quartet writing, and will always be the most daunting challenge for performers. (The present volume also includes a superb performance of the F minor quartet, Op. 95, room for which could not be found on their set of the middle period quartets). In the first two volumes in the Takács survey, these marvellous players proved themselves equal to Beethoven's fearsome technical demands, while demonstrating a deep understanding of what makes each work unique. In the accompanying booklet, Edward Dusinberre, the quartet's first violin, writes about relishing 'the sharp contrasts of mood and extraordinary range of emotion conveyed in this music.' This does not exclude humour, even in the Grosse Fuge - beam in at 7'14'' for a sparkily articulated Allegro molto con brio. The whole fugue, rightly placed within the Op. 130 quartet, with Beethoven's light-weight alternative offered as an appendix, is the tour de force that it should be. Earlier in the same quartet the Takács deliver playing of the utmost concentration in the Cavatina. Throughout the set the Takács sound is refined and luminous without any unwanted plushness, and Andrew Keener's production offers sound of biting immediacy with just enough of the building (St. George's, Bristol). This is likely to remain my principal recommendation for the Beethoven quartets for the foreseeable future.

Reviewed by Sandy Matheson