Details

Field of Interest

Classical Music

Composer

Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770-1827

Content Type

Music recording

Duration

1 hour 7 mins

Recording Engineer

Tim Handley, fl. 1985

Ensemble

New Budapest String Quartet

Format

Audio

Sub Genre

String Quartet, Scherzo

Label

Helios

Producer

Arthur Johnson

Date Recorded

1989-07-01

Review

The common wisdom in the '70s and '80s was that the three great sets of Beethoven string quartets were those by the Quartetto Italiano, the Alban Berg Quartet, and the Végh Quartet. The Italiano's were said to be the most graceful and beautiful, the Alban Berg's to be the most probing and penetrating, and the Végh's the most sublime and exalted. But as fine as beauty is and as fun as probing is, in Beethoven string quartets, nothing beats sublime and exalted. The Végh's recordings of the Beethoven quartets were occasionally too rhythmically driven or too rhapsodically expressive or too extravagantly dramatic. But they were also almost always inspired and they were always under the control of first violinist Sandor Végh. And while rhapsodically expressive may be too much for Beethoven's early quartets and extravagantly dramatic may not be the best interpretive approach to the middle quartets, a sense of inspiration -- a sense of the breath of the infinite and the eternal -- is exactly what the late quartets need to succeed and that's exactly what the Végh brings to the late quartets. And its late quartets do succeed, succeed through their ineffable emotions, their luminous tone, and their ecstatic interpretations. Maybe the Italiano's early quartets were the best. Maybe the Alban Berg Quartet's middle quartets were the best. But surely the Végh's late quartets are among the greatest recordings of anything ever made. ~ James Leonard, All Music Guide

Subject

Classical Music, Music & Performing Arts, Classical, Clásica, Clássica

Keywords and Translated Subjects

Clásica, Clássica