Search - Ludwig van Beethoven, Orford String Quartet :: Complete Quartets, Vol. 3

There's no reason to prefer the Orford over the others.

fungfucius | Lagrangeville, NY United States | 07/11/2003

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Let's get to the chase. All three Razumovsky quartets are supposed to bear some Russian flavor. Beethoven marked the 4th movement of the Razumovsky #1 'Allegro', which means quick and lively. The great man wanted to take his Russian theme (theme russe!) and stormed up a hill!! Listen to the Budapest quartet play it: the tempo quickens immediately after the first note, the pace getting faster by each succeeding note, building a crescendo, until the tention is spent and the Russian theme comes to a glorious conclusion. Regretably, the Orford quartet storms no hill; they walk up and down leisurely like a sunday stroll. Totalling up, it takes them 8 and a half minutes to complete this movement.Please bear with some arithmetic. To play this same movement, the Budapest quartet takes 6:13 minutes, the Italiano takes 6:38, the Hungarian 7:33, and the Emerson 7:11. Other than to linger, I don't know why the Orford thought it appropriate to use 8:30!!To sum up, the Orford is high-powered and has a good tone. But they exaggerate in expressiveness and dynamics. They tend to beautify Beethoven's music, and therein lies the problem."