Alban Berg (1885-1935)
String Quartet, Op 3 (1910)
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
String Quartet No 7 in F-sharp minor, Op 108 (1960)
György Ligeti (1923-2006)
String Quartet No 1, ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’ (1954)
Minetti Quartet
rec. 2018, Lorely-Saal, Vienna
Hänssler Classic HC23060 [53]
Founded in 2003, the Vienna based Minetti Quartet is named after Thomas Bernhard’s play Minetti – Ein Portrait des Künstlers als alter Mann (Minetti -A Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man) from 1977. Two of the Minetti quartet members reside in Ohlsdorf in the Salzkammergut region, where Bernhard had lived. Comprising three, twentieth-century string quartets by Berg, Shostakovich and Ligeti, this album is the Minetti quartet’s fifth release for the Hänssler Classic label. Music writer Sabine M. Gruber heads her booklet essay with the words ‘For Nina, for Helene, for the drawer’, a reference to a theme of the Romantic dedication each composer gave to his respective quartet.
Alban Berg was famously a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg. The two movements String Quartet from 1910 is his earliest large-scale atonal piece, a key work of the Second Viennese School. Thorny and technically challenging, it concentrates on the synthesis between traditional and progressive compositional techniques. Its inspiration was Berg’s love for his fiancée Helene Nahowski. Prior to its premiere in April 1911, he dedicated the score to Meiner Frau (To my Wife) and a few weeks later he married her.
The Minetti Quartet responds to Berg’s writing with playing of a steely resolve that unfortunately communicates little sense of exploration. My preferred account is the compelling 1968-70 recording from LaSalle Quartet, reissued on Brilliant Classics.
Shostakovich completed his String Quartet No 7 in F-sharp minor in 1960 when it was premiered by the Beethoven Quartet in Leningrad. In three connected movements it is the shortest of his fifteen string quartets; it is dedicated to Shostakovich’s first wife, Nina Vasilyevna Varzar, who died suddenly in 1954 and serves as a fitting memorial. Shostakovich’s choice of F-sharp minor is significant, due to its associations with death and grief. This account does not contain the depth of emotion ideally required. Those interested in recordings of Shostakovich’s complete string quartets are spoilt for choice. Occasionally, I’ve seen new complete sets available for not much more than a couple of full price CDs. My first-choice set is from the Pacifica Quartet titled the ‘The Soviet Experience’, comprising the complete Shostakovich string quartets and one from each of four contemporaries: Miaskovsky (No 13), Prokofiev (No 2), Weinberg (No 6) and Schnittke (No 3). Recorded at the University of Illinois between 2010-13, the Pacifica displays a compelling insight into these works. Praiseworthy, too, is the first recorded complete set of the Shostakovich quartets in splendid sound and compellingly played by the Fitzwilliam String Quartet in 1975-77. The set also has the distinct advantage of the last three quartets having been recorded in the presence of the composer.
Ligeti completed his First String Quartet at Budapest in 1954, when Hungarian composers were subject to severe censorship from the Soviet regime. With no likelihood of a performance, Ligeti consigned his quartet to the drawer in hope of an improved political climate. In 1956, he fled Hungary for the neutrality of Austria and the quartet received its premiere in 1958 in Vienna. Hungarian composer György Kurtág described the score as ‘Bartók’s 7th String Quartet’, as Ligeti was strongly influenced by Bartók’s repeated focus of night and darkness in his Third and Fourth Quartets.
To his First String Quartet, Ligeti assigned the title Métamorphoses nocturnes, referring to a sort of variation form, without a distinct theme. Cast in a single continuous movement, the quartet has 17 sections or scenes that function like links of a chain. The Minetti seems better suited to the technical demands of Ligeti’s ever shifting sound world here; one senses a high level of concentration in a focused playing. The main competition for the Minetti comes from the Arditti Quartet, with its two recordings of Ligeti’s First String Quartet. The account I admire more is from 1994 perceptively played, in the Henry Wood Hall, London; it is included in the ‘György Ligeti Edition 1 – String Quartets and Duets’ on Sony.
The sound is clear and well-balanced. This is an interesting release, with much splendid playing by the Minetti, but it cannot match the strong competition.
Michael Cookson
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Minetti Quartet:
Maria Ehmer (violin), Anna Knopp (violin), Milan Milojicic (viola), Leonhard Roczek (cello)
