Having completed their survey for Teldec of the late Beethoven quartets and the Opp. 74 and 95 works (reviewed variously over the last four years), the Vermeer Quartet have now turned to the Rasumovsky set. The late quartets have more to them than any one performance can uncover and some of their depth and wisdom eludes even the finest of interpreters. The Vermeer maintain a lower profile in the UK than the Alban Berg or the Borodin Quartets, who make relatively frequent appearances here. However, they are dedicated players who present an unfailingly serious and considered view of most repertoire they touch, and it goes without saying that in terms of ensemble and tonal blend they can hold their own with the best. All the same, as I said in reviewing some of their earlier discs, one admires their corporate virtuosity rather more than one warms to the results. They are not ideally served by their aural environment: as was the case with earlier issues, the recordings are made in the slightly dry acoustic of the Teldec studios in Berlin, though I must admit that there is perhaps rather more bloom than I recall in their Opp. 127 and 135 disc.
They give a generally well paced and proportioned account of the F major Rasumovsky, even though feeling is perhaps overprojected in the slow movement. I found the performance far more musically satisfying than their Op. 74 but would also welcome rather less generalized dynamics: piano markings are quite often mezzo-forte (one instance is the second group of the first movement). However, their playing is distinguished by dedication and a sense of purpose, and more than some of the recordings I have heard in recent months, they seem in no doubt that they are dealing with great music. Again, in the E minor Quartet, they seem to find the tempo that enables the argument to unfold naturally, though periodically sforzandos are a bit aggressive; witness the opening of the finale, though I am well aware that the forward balance may reinforce this impression. The C major work is splendidly played even if some may find its mysterious opening a bit overdramatized. Needless to say the finale holds no terrors for them, though their account sounds positively sedate by comparison with the headlong stampede offered by the Guarneri. Hearing any of these performances in the concert hall, it would be difficult to withhold admiration and respect but I can't say that I would rush to hear them again on record. They do not have those special qualities, call them spirituality, wisdom, humanity or what you like, that distinguish the Vegh (Auvidis/Koch International), Talich (Calliope/Harmonia Mundi) and the Lindsay (ASV) among more modern recordings, and the earlier Quartetto Italiano set, recorded in 1975, on Philips.
The Guarneri set was recorded during the period 1966–9, and again more space round the sound would have been welcome. Of course these matters are inevitably one of personal taste but I find the sound too airless and wanting in bloom; the acoustic perhaps accentuates the wiriness of tone this ensemble was occasionally accused of at the time. I started with the Rasumovsky set which I remembered least well. I liked their spacious view of the first movement of the F major, as I see did Roger Fiske in 1970, and the steady tempo they adopt in the slow movement, though they miss a lot of its depth. The dry studio acoustic makes the opening chords of the E minor work even more aggressive than they probably were, and the ff semiquavers at bar 26 (track 1: 0'44'') sound tubby and aggressive. There are good things in the slow movement, and everything is well thought out and I rather like the taut, vital rhythms of the finale, but generally speaking this playing is all too high on power and thrust but low on naturalness. The finale of Op 59, No. 3 sounds quite grotesque.
No one could describe these or, for that matter, the late quartets as unforced. The latter are accommodated on three CDs; Op. 132 and the Grosse Fuge on the first; Op. 131 and the first three movements of Op. 127 on the second, with the remainder of Op. 127 plus Opp. 130 and 135 on the last disc. Even if the performances were of commanding stature, the change of disc in Op. 127 will no doubt rule this set out of court for many readers. (DG managed to arrange their Melos Quartet three-disc set without any such dismemberment—(CD) 415 676-2GH3, 10/86.) There is nothing like browsing through the back numbers of record magazines but doing so late one night I came across a stern, rather schoolmasterly dismissal of this set: ''Brilliance of technique and concentrated virtuosity are not enough in Beethoven''! Probably the best of the Guarneri sets is the Op. 18, though it divided opinion at the time: MM generally admired it, though not so many months later Max Harrison compared it unfavourably to the Hungarian Quartet on HMV (nla—though scheduled for imminent release on CD). Again the layout is unusual, the first CD accommodating Nos. 1–3; the second Nos. 4 and 5, and the third No. 6 at only 25'36''. There would have been room for the String Quintet, Op. 29, which they recorded with Pinchas Zukerman for RCA in 1979. But whatever the merits of the Guarneri, the naturalness of utterance and elegance of the Quartetto Italiano, as well as their vastly superior recorded sound, make this RCA set relatively uncompetitive.'