Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
String Quartet No. 6 in F minor, Op. 80 (1847)
Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)
String Quartet No. 13 in G, Op. 106 (1895)
Simply Quartet
rec. Festeburgkirsche Frankfurt 2023
Genuin GEN 25897 [65′]

“Simply Quartet” sounds like it could be a generic grocery item, but the Simply Quartet — founded in Shanghai, currently based in Vienna — is anything but generic.

Their bristling approach to Mendelssohn’s last quartet, in fact, immediately commands attention. Mendelssohn is sometimes unjustly dismissed as a salon composer; but his symphonies and concertos offer broad, sturdy structures with a strong rhythmic line and plenty of dramatic turbulence in the development sections. Even the first two quartets, which the Juilliard seem to have specialized in, offer busier textures and a wider emotional range than salon pieces could ever encompass.

Here, tensile tremolos propel the first movement, and even the  “calmer” figures, at the same speed, are unsettled and unsettling. Accents are incisive, amd a ritard in the recap figures as a major musical event. An acceleration in the coda tightens the screws still further.

In the similarly taut, driving scherzo, the quieter Trio maintains the pace, so you don’t really relax. The quartet’s manner is simple as the Adagio slowly finds its way; the players lean more heavily into the accents as the movement approaches its climax. The execution is clean and musical, but here a sweeter, more vibrant tone would not have been out of place. The same is true for the alert, dashing Finale, which comprises really too brief a windup for what’s preceded.

The Dvořák brings its own problems. Unlike, say, the clear, melodic American quartet (Opus 96), some of the composer’s other specimens are burgeoning with motifs, combining into discursive structures with overly busy textures. The Third Quartet (D. 18) is one such score; on its showing here, the Thirteenth is another. It’s constructed primarily, not from broad themes, but from short motifs, better for building forms than for drawing the listener’s ear. The first-movement development is trenchant, but only a few passages, like therocking second theme of the Allegro ma non troppo, deliver the expected lyricism. The no-nonsense, Molto vivace — a rondo-like scherzo,with one of its Trios especially spacious and serene –probably comes off best.

The players give it their best shot, conjuring a nice variety of colours, from bright to dusky. Their playing does get a bit slurry in the first movement’s turbulent bits, however, and the high, quiet writing at the end of the Adagio, while well in tune, is, again, wiry rather than vibrant.

All right, so neither of these performances quite fulfills its initial promise. But the Simply Quartet is an ensemble with a distinctive interpretive mind, and I’m looking forward to their further work.

Stephen Francis Vasta

stevedisque.wordpress.com/blog

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