Bartok - String Quartet nr. 3

I've been listening another few times to Bartok's Third Quartet. I must have heard it at least 30 times since I started to dig seriously into the quartets. It's a wonderful piece. Amazingly dense and varied, and explosive in its energy, like a musical cluster bomb. And given the variety of moods and its position as a stylistic hinge between the earlier, more romantic work and the dark expressionism of the mid-twenties, it is a good reference to gauge how ensembles tackle these quartets.

I have now two additional complete sets of the quartets in my collection: a re-issue on the Newton label of the recordings with the Hagen Quartet on DGG (1995, 1998). And the celebrated Takacs Quartet on Decca. They both make for quite compelling listening. It seems to me now that quartets position themselves along two key variables vis-à-vis this body of work: either they opt for a neo-classical vs a folk-dominated approach, and they adopt an international style vs a more Hungarian sounding idiom. The two dimensions seem to correlate, and they effectively might, but at this point I'm not so sure so I keep them separate.

Clearly, the Takacs occupy one end of the spectrum. Their approach is very visceral, agressive even, stressing the gypsy-elements in the music, at the expense at times of clarity of line. The Hagens are at the other end with their very finely etched, cosmopolitan, even intellectualised sound. The Belcea are somewhere in between. I think they provide a very modern reading, not at all rustic, but it's very dynamic and does not shirk from the music's folksy roots. The Keller Quartet has a strong Hungarian pedigree but they adopt a more restrained, neo-classical approach. I still wonder whether it works. The Vegh, finally,  are admirably earthbound: the epitome of Hungarianness. But stylistically they hover somewhere between a strong folk-dominated approach and a more balanced classical approach. I can't say much about the Juilliard, as their 1981 digital recording which I have been listening to is hardly their best effort. But I believe they side more with the Hagen Quartet.

I'm not sure whether the above makes at all sense, but it helps me to navigate this fascinating terrain. There is still a long way to go before I will have surveyed all six quartets.