There’s something peculiarly appealing about delving among the pages of an expansive, imaginatively written string quartet. Schoenberg, Reger and Hindemith all composed them; even Dvorak let his ideas ramble for an hour-long Third Quartet, but Enescu’s 1920 First Quartet crams so much into 45-odd minutes that even two or three hearings barely scratch its surface. The massive, harmonically complex first movement is cast in sonata form, though the extended stream of consciousness that dominates the development section embraces all manner of colours and nuances. It’s a veritable forest of invention, fairly Brahmsian in texture, organic in its thinking (themes thread easily from one to another) and frequently dramatic.
The second movement incorporates sundry embellishments and effects (including the use of sul ponticello), and the finale features variations on a march-like theme. It will make a wonderful listen for anyone who values quality ideas above economical structuring. And yet I sympathise with the late Lionel Salter who, when reviewing the Voces Quartet version on Olympia, was somewhat dazed by what he saw as a ‘profusion of material [that] makes following the course of the musical thought something of a challenge’. In my view, it’s a challenge worth facing.
Although the two quartets share the single opus number (22), they’re years apart chronologically, aeons if you consider their contrasting styles. The Second Quartet was Enescu’s penultimate work and breathes the heady aroma of Romanian folk music, especially in the slow movement and finale, which recall the world of the far better-known Third Violin Sonata. Shorter than the First Quartet by almost half, the Second feels tighter and more agile. Again, Enescu employs sul ponticello; harmonics too, while certain parts of the work (the second movement in particular) seem to have taken on board something of the colour scheme that Bartok employed for his Fifth Quartet. At other times Enescu seems closer to Schoenberg than to Bartok, which surprised me.
The Ad Libitum Quartet do a fabulous job. They attend to Enescu’s endless technical demands with a devotion that translates to apparent effortlessness. That in itself is a real achievement, and their generally soft-spoken, conversational mode of playing is in marked contrast to the tougher-grained Voces Quartet on Olympia, another good group, marginally more intense than Ad Libitum, more angular in their phrasing but hardly flattered by a hard analogue recording. CPO’s Quatuor Athenaeum Enesco are also accomplished, swifter than the Ad Libitum in the Second Quartet and more resonantly recorded. I like their freewheeling way with the First Quartet’s third movement but, viewed overall, their command of nuance is less comprehensive than Ad Libitum’s, and their tempo transitions less effective. The CPO disc is issued at full price whereas Olympia’s is at a reasonable mid-price point. Still, Naxos’s superior production is a secure top recommendation and unbeatable value at super-budget price. You simply have to try it