I didn’t ‘get’ this touched-up version of the Seven Last Words when I first heard it courtesy of the Henschel Quartet and Susanne Kelling (Challenge, 10/12). I still don’t. Far from offering the revelations promised by the cover blurb, José Peris Lacasa’s arrangement does little more than substitute a soprano for first violin in the principal motifs (corresponding to Christ’s ‘Words’) of each movement. En route he takes a few mild liberties. In No 3 (‘Mother, behold thy son’) the soprano dialogues with cello for a couple of bars. In No 5 (‘I thirst’) she substitutes briefly for second violin and viola. In No 2’s vision of Paradise there are unconvincing octave transpositions to keep the soprano within her comfort zone. Occasionally, as in the third and fourth Words, the singer holds a high note above the rests that are such a crucial part of Haydn’s design. I find the total effect banal, nowhere more so than in the jarring mini-cadenza inserted at the return of the main theme in the final Word (3'23").

The Pražák Quartet are an expert group, of course, and Irish soprano Helen Kearns has a clear, bright tone and phrases sensitively, though her consonants can be vague. She’s certainly preferable to the pleasant but rather pallid Susanne Kelling. Conversely, while the Pražák‘s tempos are well chosen, their playing sounds less imaginatively involved than the Henschel’s; and they don’t always avoid the danger of auto-chug in Haydn’s long stretches of repeated-note accompaniment.

I would always rather hear Haydn’s sublime Passion meditations in their original orchestral incarnation. So much detail, colour and sheer power is lost in his hastily made arrangement for string quartet. In many quartet performances, including the Pražák‘s, the final Earthquake barely registers on the Richter scale. Which hasn’t stopped virtually every ensemble worth its salt taking up the cause, most persuasively The Lindsays (ASV, 6/93), the Fitzwilliam, using gut strings (Linn, 7/01), and, my own favourite, the ever-probing Casals (Harmonia Mundi, 6/14).