Beethoven: The Late String Quartets [Box set]

Ludwig van Beethoven (Composer), Takacs Quartet (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Takacs Quartet
• Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
• Audio CD (January 11, 2005)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 3
• Format: Box set
• Note on Boxed Sets: During shipping, discs in boxed sets occasionally become dislodged without damage. Please examine and play these discs. If you are not completely satisfied, we'll refund or replace your purchase.
• Label: Decca
• ASIN: B00067R3BG
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #58,933 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Some Quartets, like the Busch, Italiano, and Talich, have come close to the inner core of these supreme masterpieces. The Takács Quartet now joins those select few. From the opening chords of the Op. 127--firmly stated, perfectly blended, just gruff enough while still sounding beautiful--you know you're in safe hands during this journey into the deepest, most timeless works in the repertory. Slow movements are always a major test here, and if the Takács doesn't surpass some of the above-mentioned groups, they are superior to their present-day peers in conveying Beethoven's deepest thinking while also attending to surface beauties. The Takács surpass the Emersons and Alban Berg Quartet(admirable as those performances are)in their interpretive insights and ensemble sound. But these masterpieces are so rich and dense that admirers need more than one version. The Takács are masters of Beethoven's quick-changing contrasts, making them sound logical, even inevitable. While their playing is full of drive and forward motion, it’s never excessively energetic or overly lean. Of course, the Grosse Fugue is included, along with Beethoven's substitute finale Opus 130 and the Opus 95 Quartet, making for three well-filled discs recorded in excellent sound. --Dan Davis

San Francisco Chronicle, 1/16/05

puts the seal on a complete cycle that promises to set a standard for such efforts through the coming decades.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

130 of 131 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Really Extraordinary, May 21, 2005

By 

J Scott Morrison (Middlebury VT, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Beethoven: The Late String Quartets (Audio CD)

It has been a labor of love for me these last few days to listen to various other recordings of the Beethoven Late Quartets (including Op. 95, the 'Serioso') in comparison to this really quite remarkable set from the Takács Quartet. There are, of course, differing approaches to these protean quartets and who is to say which is correct? There are the big smooth approaches like those of the Guarneris and the beloved Quartetto Italianos, the ultra-clean and slightly clinical approaches like those of the Bergs and the Emersons (and, possibly, the Vermeers whose new set of the Bartóks is sitting there on my desk staring at me, daring me to open them), and the hell-bent-for-leather performances like those of the Cleveland and the new one by the Gewandhaus (which I strongly recommend). The Takács seem to be in a category all their own, with some features of all the above-mentioned groups, but with very much their own take on these works. Their playing is extremely subtle, but I don't use that term to mean mannered, reticent or timid. Rather, they are full-steam-ahead where it matters -- just listen to the opening chords of the Op. 127 which, as it happens, is the first track on CD 1 -- nothing backward about that; in fact, those chords are a bit raw and certainly quite powerful (just as I imagine Beethoven intended them). But in the slower parts of that very same movement there is such dynamic variation and wide variety of expression -- fitting, isn't it, for these wildly variable works? -- that one gasps at the beauty and effectiveness of it all. I give full credit to first violinist Edward Dusinberre whose tone has infinite variety, is never virtuosic in the show-offy sense, is always of a piece with the sound of his colleagues and yet is clearly the primus inter pares. Dusinberre may indeed be the most musical quartet violinist I've ever encountered -- well, that's too broad a statement, but you get some idea of what my reaction to his playing is. I'm a bear when it comes to intonation and this quartet is almost always completely in tune with each other, not something one can say about some (the recently disbanded Lindsays, say). Their tone is slightly on the dry side generally although they can put plenty of juice in their tone when necessary. In this sense they remind me a bit of the old Busch Quartet recordings, particularly in these late quartets.

The slow movements of these quartets -- which, by the way, I tend to think of as a huge mega-quartet, not a dismissable idea considering how Beethoven reused motifs and took movements and moved them around from one quartet to another as the impulse struck him -- are simply ravishing. Just listen to the slow movement, the 'Heiliger Dankgesang', of the Op. 132. It literally brought tears to my eyes. Or the Lento assai of the Op. 135.

The Op. 130 is arranged so that the 'Grosse Fuge' is in place of the replacement fourth movement, which then follows. If you prefer Beethoven's notion to put a simple movement in fourth position, you can simply program out the 'Grosse Fuge.' Personally, I prefer the 'Grosse Fuge' to be included as the finale of the Op. 130, so it tickled me to have it arranged this way. And what a performance of the 'Grosse Fuge' this is! It is played with ferocity and real edge -- some folks might balk at that, I suppose -- that conveys the almost superhuman struggle this movement requires. Surely that's what Beethoven intended, don't you think? Yet there are lyrically tender moments, too, in the meno mosso e moderato sections.

I probably would have to be forced at gunpoint to give up any of my CDs of various quartets' performances of the late quartets, but at this moment, at least, I think I'd hold the Takács closest to my breast and relinquish it last.

Strongest recommendation.

3 CDs TT=220mins

Scott Morrison

75 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SUBLIME!!!, February 4, 2005

By 

Alberich (MANASSAS, VIRGINIA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Beethoven: The Late String Quartets (Audio CD)

First, my short review....in a word: EUREKA!!

For those who have not ever purchased a complete set of the Beethoven Quartets, I hesitate to tell those auditors to purchase this Sine Qua Non set by the Takacs Quartet, for they may feel no
need to purchase any other set, so marvelous and fine a set these are, but if one should own only one set of Beethoven Quartets, then one can hardly regret one's chose if this be it....this particular set of the Late Quartets completes the Takacs cycle and my copy arrived last night...I began with Der Grosse Fuge and shivered in ecstasy for the length of the performance....I let the cd continue into the
Replacement movement for Der Grosse Fuge in Opus 130, then staggering under the weight of my central nervous system's attempt to digest the experience of these segments of the precious Beethovenian Sound/Time Continuum, I pulled out and played the first & last movements of the Quartet #14 in C sharp minor, Op. 131, which is my favorite Beethoven Quartet, which soared to the empyreal realm that some quartets can only dream of...EUREKA!!!...

...so the Takacs cycle reduces the Emersons to mere toast....the Takacs can only be equalled but never surpassed in pace, rhythm, phrasing, timbre, accents, dynamics, ensemble and subtlety of expression...

...I humbly place the aesthetic achievement of the Takacs Beethoven cycle along side that of the past achievements of the Vegh Quartet, the Italian Quartet, the Lindsay Quartet, the Budapest Quartet, the Hungarian Quartet and the Busch Quartet... and the recorded sound by Decca exceeded my expectations...

...Warning!...if one is personally attached to the achievements of the Guarneri Quartet, the Juilliard Quartet, or the Emerson Quartet, then do not purchase the Takacs Cycle for either your past reveries will be shattered and rendered to dust by, in my opinion, of course, the superior performances of the Takacs or the subtle, sublime music making of the Takacs will simply float past your ears as if one were as tone deaf as General Ulysses S. Grant, who once said: "I only know two tunes. One of them is Yankee Doodle and the other isn't."...

Alberich

46 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicious...It Rocks The House!, March 4, 2005

By 

jive rhapsodist (NYC, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Beethoven: The Late String Quartets (Audio CD)

Yeah...well, I've been unfaithful...The Busch has been my main set for 25 years. But I saw 2 concerts of the Takacs' series this year and I knew I had to have this. And it's wonderful...The Gravitas of the Busch will never be equalled. But Levitas? There the Takacs has it all over Adolph and his gang. Listen to the last movement of Op. 127. This is Beethoven for our time. This is Beethoven that has heard Duke Ellington, The Beatles,James Brown,Ligeti,The Tarafs de Haidouck,etc. But there's no distortion, only a gestural mirror. Playful, joyful, funky...I must admit that I will always return to the Busch Op. 131. I don't feel that the Takacs really sustained the aura of my very favorite quartet. Well, but every home should have a few Beethoven Late Quartet sets. And this is one of the essential ones. Oh, one more thing: Edward Dusinberre manages the (nearly) impossible - to be a 1st violinist with both a conventionally beautiful sound AND the ability to drive the quartet towards incisive, brilliant chamber performances. If you think of Adolph Busch, Sandor Vegh, Robert Mann, Rudolph Kolisch, you realise that a certain unsentimental roughness has often been considered de rigueur in order to avoid soupiness and kitsch...but somehow these guys pull it off...