It seems that the price of the Alban Berg Quartett’s late-’70s/early-’80s Beethoven cycle goes down each time it’s reissued. This time around, the seven discs are housed in an attractive, space-saving box, with no skimping on annotations. Although the booklet credits these transfers as the same 1985 digital remasterings that have appeared at least twice before, my ears detect slightly more emphasis on the upper transients. Maybe I’m hallucinating. More to the point, the past 20 years have seen more distinguished Beethoven quartet recordings than at any other time in the phonograph’s history. None, however, are consistently so accomplished as the Alban Berg Quartett’s. They play with whirling vitality and tender sophistication, and handle Beethoven’s often stressful contrasts of dynamics and phrasings with meaningful finesse. Melodies and accompanying sequences are equally projected with pinpoint delineation and beauty, yet never at the expense of the composer’s underlying nervous energy. And what ravishingly colored pianissimos, particularly bone-chilling in the slow movements of Op. 127, Op. 135, and the Cavatina in Op. 130.
You won’t find a trace of the occasional finicky phrasal adjustment or looser-limbed ambiance marking the ensemble’s live 1989 remakes, nor the heavy intakes of breath peppering the Vegh Quartet’s seasoned and stylish cycle, or the Emerson Quartet’s eager overphrasing. If I could tame the engineering’s resonance just the tiniest hair, I’d quash my sole reservation about this absurdly cheap, and profoundly uplifting Beethoven Quartet cycle. And to think all this amazing music, so intelligently and sensitively performed, costs less than dinner and a movie! [1/26/2000]
