''Individual originality can be rooted only in national originality'' was Kodaly's belief. His First Quartet, finished in 1909, was his first major composition; by the time the Second was completed, in 1918, he had been collecting and studying folk-song material for more than a decade. One wonders whether he might have gone on to write more quartets had Bartok not done so and produced an act so difficult to follow. He and Kodaly shared a concern to revitalize Hungarian musical art through the language and spirit of folk-song, and for a while they had worked together in the field; but by the time their first two quartets were produced—Bartok's, in each case, preceding Kodaly's by just a year—it must have been clear to Kodaly that he was doomed forever to be the weaker voice, in instrumental music at least. We shouldn't, of course, use Bartok's incomparable example as a stick with which to beat him: but it does seem a little bizarre to find the sleeve-notes here making claims for Kodaly's achievement as a quartet writer as if Bartok's first two quartets had never existed.
The quartet which bears his name may not be the finest of its kind in Hungary today but it makes a good sound and goes about its task with determination. The digital recording is very serviceable. The impression of a task to be addressed is evident here and there in No. 1, I think, if only because its thematic working and the elaboration of its textures are carried through with such insistence—the young Kodaly wanting to show the world a thing or two, no doubt. Well, at nearly 40 minutes he does go on a bit. The players are good, with the violist in particular impressing by the way he takes his chances, but I'd have welcomed more refinement in the grading of dynamics and colour; also stronger contrasts and greater freedom in the projection of the big moments. And although they're sanctioned in the published score I can't help regretting the two cuts in the variation-finale, which remove one entire variation from a sequence of five, firstly, and then a sizeable chunk of the coda. The effect, at the end, is of a long piece which collapses in a heap.
The conciseness of Quartet No. 2, together with its airier textures, make it a more grateful proposition for listener and performers alike. This is a strong, lyric essay, showing some indebtedness to Debussy, I think, as well as to the Hungarian melos, but convincing in its two-movement shape as well as compelling in voice. Bartok's intensity and originality of thought should not be expected from it. In welcoming it back to the Gramophone Classical Catalogue, may I ask if any reader knows whether the celebrated Waldbauer-Kerpely Quartet, for whom Bartok and Kodaly wrote their first two quartets, ever recorded it? With a change only of viola player this ensemble had a career of more than 30 years and was active, I'm told, until the 1940s.'