A RETURN TO HEAVEN

For the Takács Quartet, re-recording two of Schubert’s string quartets, albeit with a new line-up, has been an eye-opening experience, as first violinist Edward Dusinberre and violist Richard O’Neill tell Charlotte Gardner

Both special circumstances and a special artist are needed for entry into the recording studio twice with the same major work, and that is precisely what we have in the case of the Takács Quartet and its latest album. The group pairs Schubert’s late, great, ‘heavenly length’ String Quartet no.15 in G major D887 (which it previously recorded in 1996, for Decca) with his early- to middle-period String Quartet no.8 in B flat major D112 (which it first recorded back in 1982 for Hungaroton). In terms of circumstances, this is not the same set of players as on the earlier readings – only cellist András Fejér remains of the original line-up that recorded D112; and while today’s first violinist Edward Dusinberre (above right) played on the 1996 D887 recording, Harumi Rhodes replaced original second violinist Károly Schranz in 2018, and violist Richard O’Neill (above left) joined as recently as 2020 (Roger Tapping having left as long ago as 2005).

The constant over the decades, meanwhile, has been this much-loved quartet’s affinity for Schubert. In fact, it was with Schubert’s D804 ‘Rosamunde’ Quartet and D810 ‘Death and the Maiden’ that the Takács made its critically acclaimed Hyperion debut in 2006. So as Dusinberre reached his 30th year in the quartet in 2023, a revisiting of the monumental G major felt apt. ‘It’s an incredibly daunting, all-encompassing piece, and actually so tough on stamina that we hadn’t played it for a while,’ he explains over video call from Boulder, Colorado, where the Takács is quartet-inresidence at the university. ‘I just loved the idea of recording it again now – with Harumi’s and Richard’s fresh perspectives.’

AMANDA TIPTON

‘MY GREAT GIFT WHEN I JOINED THE TAKÁCS WAS SIX CRATES OF PARTS FROM ALL ITS PREVIOUS VIOLA PLAYERS’

Yet the quartet’s heritage is also strongly present – something O’Neill, also on the call, is keen to highlight. ‘My great gift when I joined the Takács was six crates of parts from all its previous viola players,’ he says. ‘Every one of them left something very beautiful that I could use on this recording, including the original violist Gábor Ormai for D112. For the G major, though, I used dear Roger Tapping’s part exclusively. I never really got to work with Roger, but I sense that he spent a lot of time figuring out just the right, often very unconventional fingering, which I deeply appreciate.’

Sessions took place in the UK at Monmouthshire’s Wyastone Concert Hall, the quartet’s long-favoured recording venue for its lack of distractions and the bonding experience offered by evenings spent together in a nearby historic hotel. In the context of nature-loving Schubert, its remote Wye Valley setting now proved especially helpful, particularly with the G major Quartet, which they recorded first. ‘We were really trying to bring out its dual elements,’ says Dusinberre. ‘On the one hand, there’s its tremendous sense of terror, drama and extremity, which is perhaps easier to capture with the microphone so close, because you can really push to the limits of sound and create something quite symphonic. On the other hand, there’s the sense of heavenly vision and release from the human body for a man who knew he was very ill; and somehow, coming out of the studio and looking across the river was very inspiring for us.’ Dusinberre’s previous recording experience with the work also proved valuable – his insight into its pitfalls, such as the structuring of that 21-minute first movement. ‘He asked a lot of the right questions in advance, to prepare us,’ observes O’Neill.

Another help was the quartet’s habitual way of structuring recording days: that is, following the morning session with a prolonged break until 3.30pm or 4pm. ‘Our producer, Andrew Keener, says he doesn’t know anyone else who does this,’ admits Dusinberre, ‘but for me and András – the older guys! – it works so well. I actually have a nap and sleep really deeply.’ Also, never underestimate the power of sugar. ‘You wouldn’t believe you could feel so affectionate about a little petrol station by the edge of the A40!’ he laughs. ‘But on the route from our hotel to the session, we always stop at the same one to buy flapjacks – for when you’re two or three hours in, and wondering if you can still play in tune, or if your brain is still functioning at all. That’s the important thing about a session: how to keep up morale and pace yourself, because sometimes you get some of the best material right at the end, when you are quite tired. Because your adrenalin is more settled, you might just throw in a particular way of doing a phrase.’

As often happens when they’re recording, the players tweaked certain tempos – because contrary to what can happen in live performance, the musicians were not having to accommodate to a room’s size and acoustic. With the G major Quartet, there was a particular degree of finetuning required for the slow movement, where the cello plays a viscerally beautiful melody to an accompaniment that appears to demand both a sense of ongoing, wearily walking tread, and one of momentum. Initially, they felt they were too slow. Then things sounded too impatient. Then they remembered that O’Neill had performed in Schubert’s song-cycle Winterreise, and wondered whether its narrator’s desolate snowy trudge on foot away from the house where his love has been rejected might contain clues. And when O’Neill went to his score he found some. The first song, ‘Gute Nacht’ (Good Night), in which the figure sets out into the night, offered clues; as did ‘Einsamkeit’ (Loneliness), which starts on the same note, B, as the quartet’s movement. ‘The parallels definitely helped us find that sense of long-lined inevitability,’ says O’Neill.

Recording D112 turned out to be unexpectedly profound. ‘I think I’d been a little bit condescending about it in the past,’ confesses Dusinberre, ‘but when I went back to it, I realised that all of that unease and sense of drama that you see in the later quartet is there in this one too.’ At which point, their decision to record it after the G major proved its worth. ‘I think otherwise we would have had at the back of our mind that we still had to do D887,’ he says. ‘But instead there was a sense of taking a deep breath. We didn’t treat the B flat major like a lesser piece. It got our full focus.’ Which it required, turning out to be simply a different mountain to scale. ‘Again, the slow movement is quite extraordinary,’ enthuses O’Neill. ‘It took us some time to capture the gravity of it, and there are similar tempo challenges to that of the G major; again there’s a sense of something ominous, but still somehow moving forwards. In the middle section, the two violins did some really amazing pas de deux. The way Harumi and Edward were able to meld their passings of lines was gorgeous.’

Both quartets present some pretty hair-raising passages for the first violinist, and Dusinberre now brings up D112’s last movement. ‘The first violin has a lot of finickety passagework, while the other three have this beautiful chorale-like melody. I was a little too obsessed with it; but in the session, I realised I could afford to come in and out of their sound more, to play with a lighter touch – which was quite liberating. It genuinely felt more like recording a Haydn quartet, after all the drama and muscularity of the G major.’

The Takács Quartet (l–r) Edward Dusinberre, Harumi Rhodes, András Fejér and Richard O’Neill

OWEN ZHOU

When I ask them for their overall thoughts on and hopes for the finished readings, O’Neill responds instantly. ‘I don’t know of another composer who can take you to heaven and back in such little time,’ he marvels, ‘and I feel like this recording has all those elements. I’m very proud of the way the G major turned out, and I have to say that András’s music making in the second movement, and the trio of the third, is really profound – it’s a privilege to sit next to him, and now to hear his playing on the recording.’

Dusinberre’s answer is equally full of love both for his colleagues and for Schubert. ‘It’s a conscious celebration of the quartet in this formation,’ he says. ‘There was a tremendous sense of energy and joyfulness in the process, and I hope that will come across.’

WORKS Schubert String Quartets: no.8 in B flat major D112, no.15 in G major D887

ARTIST Takács Quartet 

RECORDING VENUE Concert Hall, Wyastone Estate, Monmouth, UK 

RECORDING DATES 20–23 May 2023 

CATALOGUE NUMBER Hyperion CDA 68423 

RELEASE DATE 7 June 2024