![]() ![]() As such they are probably the most influential of all string quartets since Joachim’s, numbering mong their students the Cuarteto Casals, the Belcea Quartet, and the Artemis. Their leader, Günter Pichler, was concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic at the age of 21 but the players soon switched from orchestral playing to teaching careers, first in Vienna and then in succession to the Amadeus at Cologne. The ultimate Viennese group, the Alban Berg Quartet, took late Beethoven as a starting point for their exploration of modernism and the 20th century. Tradition does not always run in predictable lines. The cellist Emanuel Brabec was principal of the Vienna Phil and teacher of the period instrument propagator Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Baryilli was concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic from 1939 and his quartet were resident at the Musikverein. The Amadeus cling more to a definedly Viennese sweetness, while the Barylls are muscular, nonchalant, unGermanic in the glint of humour that pervades the Scherzo. On similar lines, I find it fascinating to compare two 1956 recordings – one by the Amadeus Quartet, composed of three Austro-German refugees and and English Jew, and the other by the Walter Barylli Quartet, who were Viennese and included at least one Nazi. After many changes of personnel, the Pro Arte marked its centenary in 2012 and continues playing to this day. Aside from Kolisch, the players were Albert Rahier, Germain Prévost and Ernst Friedlander. Their 1946 recording of the opus 127 sounds somehow disembodied from European traditions, beautifully played with a whispery pianissimo. Since they could no longer go home the locals granted them the first string residency at any American university and the group never looked back. ![]() The Pro Arte, originally resident at the court of the King of the Belgians, were playing in Madison, Wisconsin, at the outbreak of the Second World War. The first authentic American recording, for instance, is by the Pro Arte Quartet, which was founded on high classical principles in Belgium and had as its first violin Rudolf Kolisch, who was the brother-in-law of the arch-modernist Arnold Schoenberg. It’s not an infallible process since there are a number of outliers we need to take into account, nor does it always to the categories I have set. Probably the best way to assess different approaches to the first of Beethoven’s late quartets is to group them by the traditions I outlined yesterday in When Beethoven Became Unplayable. Welcome to the 107th work in the Slipped Disc/Idagio Beethoven Edition ![]()
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