Search - Beethoven, Tokyo String Quartet :: Late String Quartets

The Tokyo Quartet is a Machine . . .

03/11/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

". . . but WHAT a machine! Some listeners may find this set less emotionally engaging than others. Personally, my favorite set is the Quartetto Italiano's on Philips, which keeps me from giving this set five stars: the QI plays with more sympathy and feeling, I think, than Tokyo. And any number of comparisons are possible. But if perfection is what you are looking for (and some days, we want polish more than we want elusive emotional qualities) this is perhaps the recording of the late quartets you will want. Tokyo's precision is sometimes breathtaking, and nowhere more so than in the opening of the Grosse Fuge (here played in its original position, as the final movement of the Quartett Op 130; don't worry, the later ending is there also)."

Simply perfect.

Francisco Yanez Calvino | Santiago de Compostela, GALIZA, Spain. | 11/16/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The Tokyo String Quartet is one of my favourites quartets of all time, together with the Alban Berg Quartett and the Arditti Quartet for the modern music. All this three quartets have something in common, a very perfect technical playing, together with a deep and well understood musicality.



From all the Tokyo String Quartet's CDs this is one of my favourites and a jewel in this repertoire, so much that I think this are the better recordings available for Beethoven's late quartets, and I think it will be very, very, very difficult to play them better. Of course you can chose another way of performing this music, like the Mosaiques has shown, with `original instruments', or the Quartetto Italiano in a more classical style, but if we talk about perfection it's quite impossible to make it better. I've analysed this recording with the scores and I can really say it was an outstanding vision of clearness in Tokyo playing, amazing.



Of course, all the quartets are very well done. You can ask for different tempi or more charm in some passages (Melos Qt. Shows a very different possibility in this sense), but those moments based on the most highly technical demand are perfect done, like that jewel of the quartet literature, the "Grosse Fuge" Op.133, that is a lesson of fingering and union in this ensemble. The dynamics are very fine, like the pauses and the different entrances of the instruments, very important in this piece, as it could be a chaos if it's not very well done.



I have listened some other versions (Quartetto Italiano, Melos Quartett, LaSalle Quartett & Alban Berg Quartett I) but when you are used to listen this level of perfection quite all seem to be not enough, even when every quartet can give a view, and that's very important in this abstract and complex music written by Beethoven in his very last years.



The recording is AMAZING and one of the better technically registered that I know for chamber music (if you know another Tokyo String Quartet recordings, or those by the Ensemble Modern for RCA you know what am I talking about). Everything is so clear that you can imagine you have the own players at home if you have a good Hi-Fi system. You can even listen them breathes and the movement of the fingers, the clothes, the chairs, outstanding. This is a key, too, for the great success of this recordings, as perfection become much more real when you listen it in this conditions. Anyway, it's truth all that we listen. I've seen them some years ago playing in A Coruña (Spain) and I had the possibility of talking to them after the concert; we had a grateful chat about this recordings which they think are among them best.



It's a shame that Tokyo String Quartet CDs are really hard to find nowadays, even if they are RCA, DG or Sony recordings. I have all them recordings, but I would like all the people could listen this great musicians playing some of the better chamber music.



A jewel for not to be missed.

"

The religious approach

Musicus | Oslo, Norway | 02/07/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The Tokyo Quartet plays Beethoven with both reverence and a floating ease and very much sense of the architecture of the music. Yes, it is perfection, but it is something religious about it, like kids playing under stars on the first virgin snow of winter. Listen to their Beethoven gives me a strange feeling of luxury, like enjoying a glass of a well-aged red Bordeaux from one of the better chateaux. Was this Beethoven's intention? I don't know. When you get used to the perfection of the Tokyo Quartet, the imperfection of other quartets becomes unbearable. Quartetto Italiano is more sensual and dramatic, but I cannot get used to the slow feeling of their tempos. A more icy, daring approach is the one of the Takacs. I got the Talich quartet too, and Alban Berg Quartet, but when it comes to late Beethoven, Tokyo is and remains my first choice. (I think the Emerson quartet sounds wonderful, the atmosphere of that quartet's sheer sound - but their high speed ruins my listening.)"