From Szymanowski to Mendelssohn is no small step. Coming to this after the Carmina Quartet's Szymanowski disc (see review on page 71) I was more than interested to see how they could make the transition from opulence and dream-like logic to the taut, post-Beethovenian drama of these two classical-romantic masterpieces.
It turns out that the Carmina are just as firmly on home ground here. Suspicions that Op. 13 is too post-Beethovenian—that the echoes of Meister Ludwig's Op. 132 in the outer movements, or of the slow fugue from Op. 95 and the Op. 130 Cavatina in Mendelssohn's slow movement, are too conscious to be convincing—are silenced pretty quickly. What the Carmina present is a passionate, urgent and brilliantly worked musical drama, the return of the introductory Adagio at the close not a sentimental homecoming but a unique masterstroke—resemblances to other great quartets along the way are purely incidental.
To my knowledge no one has ever seriously questioned the mastery of the F minor Quartet— but it's astonishing how rarely it appears in concert programmes. Anyone who still doubts that the older Mendelssohn could recapture the fire and imaginative vigour of his youth should go straight to this work—and into this performance. Again the playing is compelling right from the start, and again at the end there's a feeling that the work has been understood thoroughly. The abrupt character-switches in the scherzo (surging syncopations fading into tiny scraps of waltz tune) are handled deftly, while as in Op. 13, the Carmina show that the lyrical Mendelssohn of the slow movement can be made expressive—intensely so—without a hint of salon sentimentality.
Recordings are near-ideal, drawing the listener right into the quartet sound but never intimidating. And as with the Szymanowski disc, an extra star to the Carmina Quartet for starting their recording career for Denon with under-exposed but thoroughly deserving repertoire. This all bodes rather well.'