Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet No. 16 in F Major, Op. 135
Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131
One of the very few advantages of getting older is to be able to look back and reflect (Moreover, let’s face it, looking forward is kind of depressing these days). And that’s exactly what I was doing last Wednesday night in the medium-sized Sala Sinapoli of the Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone as I was eagerly waiting for the all-French Quatuor Ébène to appear. I unfortunately could not attend their January concert due to a mild but ill-timed cold, and the time had finally come for me to make up for the missed opportunity.
So there I finally was, fondly remembering hearing them for the first time at the Library of Congress, which was pretty much in my backyard back in 2009. Although they had already been generating an impressive buzz closer to home, they were kind of new on the international classical music scene, but not for long. Their splendid performance of quartets by Ravel, Fauré and Debussy, wrapped up with an a cappella version of “Un jour mon prince viendra” (One day my prince will come) from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Yes, Disney’s animated movie) left no doubt. They had arrived, and they would go much further.
Almost two decades, a couple of personnel changes, and several encounters on both sides of the pond later, I saw two of those same musicians, who are now accompanied by two newer members, come onto the stage and I felt a kind of motherly pride that I did not even know I had in me. I guess it is one of those things you don’t even know you have until you suddenly experience it.
Even better, last Wednesday night’s concert was one stop of their ambitious “Beethoven 2027” project, through which they will play all of Beethoven’s quartets, and not just any stop either since that one would feature the Opus 131 and the Opus 135, two dazzling masterpieces among the extraordinary six-packs that are his Late Quartets. So who cared of the performance started at the ungodly time of 8:30 PM?
The concert started with Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 2, a youthful piece that the composer wrote when he was barely in his thirties. While it is understandably not of the same caliber as his later works, it was still a very pleasant way to ease ensemble and audience into our Beethovenian evening. This lively homage to his beloved teacher Joseph Haydn overflows with humor and witticism, and the four musicians did an excellent job at conveying its carefree insouciance while warming up for the bigger and better things to come.
We then fast-forwarded about three decades to his Opus 135, which is the shortest of his Late Quartets as well as the last major composition he completed. It is also, as far as I am concerned, the most stunning of them all, a priceless gift that keeps on relentlessly giving under its deceptively simple package, the countless gifts including an exquisite slow movement and the famous “difficult resolution”. The Quatuor Ébène brought it to life with all the fire and grace it so richly deserved, and just like the group of French attendees I heard comparing notes later on, I thought this was the best performance of the evening.
After intermission, it was time to move on to the epic tour de force that is the Opus 131, a terrifying challenge that essentially consists in playing its seven movements without an actual pause over the course of about 40 minutes. This means that the musicians need to have not only superior technique and unwavering stamina, but also good reflexes and endless flexibility in case their much put-upon instruments decide to do their own thing. That said, when you have the right ensemble, you can just sit back, relax, and marvel, like the entire audience did on Wednesday night. Schubert and Schumann were allegedly in awe of that ground-breaking quartet, which is as good a stamp of approval as any. On Wednesday night, we all were too.
