BRAHMS STRING QUARTET NO.3 OP.67

Richard O’Neill of the Takács Quartet looks at the first and third movements of this well-loved B flat major work, where the viola is thrown into a rare spotlight

MASTERCLASS

From Brahms String Quartet no.3 op.67 in B flat major. Urtext edition, paperbound. Ed. Salome Reiser. Order no. HN 41, ISMN 979-0-2018-0041-7. €21.55. Printed with permission of G. Henle Verlag, Munich © 2007

Brahms was such a passionate person and his music is gorgeous, but there’s a sense of lonely desolation in some of his string quartet writing that breaks my heart.

For me, his three quartets give a glimpse into his character in a way that none of his other compositions do, and op.67 in particular shows what a master he was. While he was progressive as a composer, he was always looking back to earlier music, including the traditions of Bach and Beethoven. I don’t think that he ever tried to sound ‘new’ – he just took old music and honoured it. His quartets are very Beethovenian in that sense, with an allegro first movement, followed by a slow movement and scherzo or minuet and trio, and then a rondo or other type of finale. At the same time, they are very Brahms!

In the Takács Quartet, we don’t tune our strings in tight, tempered 5ths to play this piece. I love to play open strings, but in B flat major, D is the third degree of the scale. If the D string is too high, everything can feel very squeezed. Instead, we tune to our cellist, András Fejér, who gives us an A and then tunes the other strings as he feels appropriate.

Beginning the first movement

The first movement is tricky to play, with all its unison arpeggiated string-crossings and changes of position. It’s a romp, but it shouldn’t tumble forward or you’ll be in trouble very quickly. There are many contrapuntal elements that need to fit within the general pulse, so if it goes too fast, it can sound incredibly hectic and hairy! To find a pulse that fits the whole movement, make sure it also works in a busy place in the score, such as bar 322. Of course, there can also be some fluctuation of tempo between sections.

Brahms was primarily a pianist, and this movement would be a lot easier to play with two hands on the piano! It begins very manageably, with the sound of a hunting horn, like a bucolic serenade. The opening quavers (e) need to bubble and fizz with energy, with accents that give articulation and colour. I give an extra push to reinforce the sforzando quavers of bar 3. From bar 22, the scales in the first violin part, and then in the viola, are more challenging: these really have to flow. Try to find a fingering where the hand feels well balanced and never locked.

THE SOLOIST

NAME RICHARD O’NEILL

NATIONALITY SOUTH KOREAN

STUDIED WITH DONALD MCINNES, KAREN TUTTLE, PAUL NEUBAUER

RECORDS FOR DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON

‘Brahms’s hemiolas weave around his melodies like ivy around a wall, and they help give momentum to the music’

You can hear O’Neill play the third movement of this quartet with the Takács Quartet at bit.ly/3F8FCWq

The unison arpeggiated string-crossings from bar 50 are very pianistic and difficult to play in a seamless, pianissimo legato.

It can help to play with active, energetic left-hand fingers, with a lot of bow, over the fingerboard. Try to fit in with the cello’s sound, to avoid sounding jagged.

It’s important that the exposition from bar 64 doesn’t sound frumpy. This movement should be ebullient, not worrisome or notey, so I lighten up the down-beats by reversing the bowing and giving the up bows a lift. Try to vary the quaver shapes and think in longer lines.

To me, the hairpin in bars 68–69 means that we should give the music space, rather than get louder and softer. We need to sing through the phrase. For the sotto voce unison passages, as from bar 106, the sound colour can again be led by the cello. The bass-line sets the tone for the entire ensemble in these places.

From bar 238, the viola is suddenly exposed. Conserve the bow for the three bars of repeated notes, then give yourself enough bow to clear all the strings at speed from bar 241. I start on an up bow in bar 244, to help me dig out the sound at the frog on the C string. From bar 257, I move the bow away from the bridge, so that my sound floats above the cello.

The third movement

As a teenager, I listened to a recording of the Cleveland Quartet, with violist Martha Katz, play this Agitato over and over again, and I loved it. It’s the only place in the string quartet repertoire where the viola has the primary voice for the majority of a movement, and it’s so well written. The parts are closely spaced, but the unmuted viola just soars above the texture of the muted ensemble. In the Cleveland Quartet’s album booklet there was a description of a lady in a red dress that I found very evocative. After the jaunty, first movement and earnest second, the third has a sudden mysterious colour, in 3/4, like an agitato dance. It’s as though that lady has entered the room, and everyone is transfixed by her sultry figure.

The opening phrase

When I first learnt this movement, I used to hook in the opening quavers so that the strong beats would always fall on a down bow and the third beats would be singing and light. In the Takács Quartet, we play it as it comes, so that the main beats oscillate between downs and ups. This gives more of an over-arching shape, while my colleagues play their little sighs underneath. I bring out the diminuendos in the first two bars by enunciating the strong beats slightly with my index finger on the bow, to give a contrast between the strong beats and the weak beats. In Brahms I find that even the most luscious legato melody can benefit from a little bit of martelé, to give a real Brahmsian richness to the sound.

Changing roles

It can be a challenge to switch between playing solo and obligato lines in this movement. Both are equally important, but they can’t have the same texture. When the first violin comes in with the melody in bar 13, play with a sense of direction and longer line, without shaping the slurs or interrupting the violin melody too much.

Your role there is to support the first violin, so shape with them, using a lot of bow.

Because the viola is not muted, you can play flautando to blend in, dragging the bow a little bit to bring out any dissonance.

The viola has the main line from bar 25 and I use martelé to give these notes some rhythmic sassiness. From bar 37 it’s important to move the bow away towards the fingerboard as you join the chordal structure of the ensemble. That’s always the role of the viola: to jump into different textures, even in our own solo movement!

Harmonic motion and tension

There is always a nobility and pace to Brahms’s harmonic changes, even in bars 49–50, where they are fast-moving but never harried or hectic. It’s important to understand the tension and struggle between these changes and the melody as we move towards the second theme in bar 57. Here Brahms writes ‘poco a poco in tempo’, without specifying an end, so don’t regain tempo too quickly. Those four whole bars can feel a little bit bent and pulled.

From bar 81, the violist is stuck on a pedal A as the violin line descends, and it creates tremendous tension. I like to be conservative with the bow to begin with, and to use more and more. It’s as though you’re being stabbed with this pitch and it hurts more the longer it continues, causing a physical reaction. Brahms writes forte in bar 83, and tries to confuse our sense of time with a hemiola, as the music gets more intense, until we’re finally released into the recapitulation in bar 89.

There is a beautiful, written-out viola cadenza in bars 106–108. You can take time here, singing out the intervals that you find the most moving. Play the first note of each group with intention, and sing through the four-bar phrase that follows, from bar 110. This isn’t a lilty waltz any more: now everybody is playing at full throttle. Brahms’s hemiolas weave around his melodies like ivy around a wall, and they help give momentum to the music.

The trio, da capo and coda

There is something intermezzo-like and autumnal about the trio from bar 130, as the fiddles reach up and the cello falls down in beautiful contrary motion. It’s sultry, smoky music. I play mezzo forte, for a searching sound, and sink into the string slightly for the hairpin and down-beats in bars 154 and 156. The dolce in bar 162 is, for me, more airy and flautando than the espressivo passages that have come before. The viola is almost alone for these beautiful arpeggiated cascades, in canon with the second violin and then, from bar 170, with the cello. This is great counterpoint and I find it deeply satisfying.

For the da capo, if I played the opening mysteriously the first time around, I play more assertively the second. I also take more time for the cadenza, and create more pause in the hemiolas that follow, so that the D major shock of the coda doesn’t hit too fast!

After that, suddenly everything becomes peaceful and calm. There are just two last moments of pain, in the F sharp, E, G of bars 193–194, and in the C sharp from bar 201. You can lean into this C sharp slightly, slowing down the bow to bring it out. Then we fall back into D major, for a touching, peaceful end.

INTERVIEW BY PAULINE HARDING

STREICHQUARTETT

B-dur

Theodor W. Engelmann gewidmet Komponiert 1875 – 1876, erschienen 1876

Viola