Bartók: String Quartets Nos. 1-6 (complete)

Indisputably one of the cornerstones of the string quartet repertoire, as well as one of the masterpieces of the 20th century, Bartók’s six string quartets have been labeled ‘the greatest quartets since Beethoven’. Now, for the first time, the six quartets have been compiled onto two (rather than three) CDs with scholarly notes by Arnold Whitall. When issued as a set on LP, it won the Gramophone Award for Best Chamber Music Recording.

"The more we immersed ourselves in these works, the more beauty and richness we discovered in them and we very much hope that this appeal will even still increase in future because we definitely consider these quartets to be the greatest masterpieces of the last century in our repertoire." Belcea Quartet

The First Quartet is the most romantic in spirit and actually harbours a love story. It marks an affectionate withdrawal from a late Romantic fin-de-siècle. The Second (1915-1917) takes us some way towards the gritty, hard-hitting Bartók of the mid-late 1920s. By 1927 Bartók, a superb pianist by any standards, was enjoying a worldwide concert career, and soaking up what that world had to offer in musical terms. One probable influence was Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite, an expressive masterpiece that thrives on a plethora of complexities. Bartók’s Third Quartet does likewise, a work that on one level seems to mimic a Hungarian rhapsody (the alternation of fast and slow music) while on the other takes tiny thematic cells and develops them into a teeming nest of musical activity. Bartók’s next two quartets are both cast unconventionally in five movements of a symmetrical, arch-like design. The Fourth (1928) has at its centre an evocative though austere example of Bartók’s ‘night music’ that opens with a rhapsodic cello solo leading in turn to imitated birdsong. The Fifth Quartet (1934) is built on a far larger scale. Bartok modifies the arch form by placing a scherzo at its centre, a syncopated dance movement in Bulgarian rhythm, framed by two slow movements using similar chord sequences. The air of ineffable sadness that hangs over Bartók’s last quartet (1938) reflects not only a swiftly sickening Europe but personal tragedy: his mother’s journey towards death would end in December 1939. All four movements open with the same, heart-rendering ‘mesto’ (sad) motto. Never has a quartet cycle ended quite so equivocally, or sounded a truer warning, one that even today inspires both awe and gratitude.

Béla Bartók, born in 1881, is considered by many to be the greatest Hungarian composer as well as one of the most significant musical voices of the 20th century. Self-taught and originally trained as a pianist, he combined elements of his homeland’s traditional folk music with the influences of his contemporaries to produce a highly distinctive, immediately recognisable style.

Bartok’s six string quartets, to which this 2CD compilation is dedicated, represent a milestone in the history of the genre and provide a unique insight into the way the composer’s musical language developed over four decades. It’s a fascinating stylistic journey, beginning with the First Quartet of 1907 – a work very much in the shadow of late Beethoven. Moving onto the Second (1917), written during a period of intense musical isolation, we encounter the influences of Strauss, Debussy and late Schoenberg before being subjected to the full-scale expressionism of the Third and Fourth Quartets (1927 and 1928 respectively). The Fifth, composed six years later, adopts a five-movement arch-like structure and is a strong contrast to the Sixth and final Quartet of 1938: deeply reflective and pessimistic in tone, this was to be Bartok’s last work before fleeing to the US to escape the spectre of fascist Europe.

Together with driving rhythms, sharp dissonances and even quarter tones, this cycle presents a huge challenge musically and technically to even the most accomplished quartets. The Guarneri, however, is on fine form here and delivers a first-rate performance brimming with character. A gem of a recording.

Béla Bartók’s six quartets are considered the most important cycle of works in the genre after those of Beethoven. Like Beethoven, the form of the quartet spanned Bartók’s creative life, across the years 1908–39. The First Quartet shows the young composer influenced by Max Reger, Wagner and late Beethoven – composers who also exerted an influence on Bartók’s contemporary Arnold Schoenberg’s First Quartet, a work Bartók knew well.

The Second Quartet saw the mature Bartókian style emerge – repeated fragments within the octave, scales without a fixed final note, and the unmistakable sound of Hungarian folk music. The sixth and final work is haunted by grief, personal and political. Bartók was deeply unsettled and alarmed by the political situation in Europe and the rise of the Nazis, and his mother fell ill at the time of this quartet’s composition; he decided to leave his native Hungary for America, from where he would never return.

Recordings made in 1995 and 1998.

New booklet notes.

‘Six very different musical worlds illuminated with laser-like precision – and with a few quirky gestures added for effect. A major addition to the Bartók quartet discography.’ Gramophone, August 2000

‘Both the Fifth and Sixth Quartets are packed full of the most delicate ideas, shimmering, self-communing music with occasional bursts of unchecked passion (No.6’s Marcia) or humour (the close of No.5’s finale and No.6’s Burletta).’ Gramophone, August 2000