Previous Duke Quartet CDs for Collins Classics have involved such imaginative cross-period couplings as Dvorak and Philip Glass (1/94), and Tchaikovsky and Schnittke (2/96). The twentieth-century component is a constant, and on this new release they tackle two of the finest, technically most formidable chamber works in the modern repertory – not normally offered on the same disc, but fitting together well as two especially intense expressions of romantic longing and its aftermath.
Intensity is the hallmark of these arresting performances, and it is reinforced by a clear but rather confined recorded sound, chosen no doubt to enhance the claustrophobic atmosphere of the music. Though I am surprised that the Schoenberg has been presented as a single track, and even more surprised that the booklet excludes the Dehmel poem on which it is based, I found the first half of this performance admirable in its concentration and eloquence. After the music makes its switch from D minor to D major, however, there are decisions about tempo which I find questionable. Quite simply, the music is often taken at too slow a pace for its flow to be sustained (especially the sections beginning at 17'58'' and 21'22''), and the mood is emphatically Sehr ruhig well before the section which receives that marking is reached. This is a shame, since there is no obvious, outstanding digital account of the chamber version of Verklarte Nacht available at the moment: indeed, there’s a school of thought that nothing has yet surpassed the very first (and Gramophone Award-winning) recording, originally issued in 1950, by the Hollywood Quartet and friends.
The tendency to lean rather too heavily on music which is already precariously poised on the brink of melodrama is also detectable in the Duke Quartet’s account of the Lyric Suite. Again, their technical competence is not in question, and the way the vital textural distinctions between principal and subordinate lines, carefully marked by Berg, are realized is exemplary. As a whole, however, the performance creates the feeling of weighty relentlessness rather than the heaven-storming abandon or delirium to which others, the Alban Berg Quartet on EMI in particular, get closer.AW