Beethoven Late Quartets 1-4

Kilrenny Kirk and Crail Kirk 26/6/25 - 26/6/25

Elias Quartet, Castalian Quartet, Belcea Quartet

The East Neuk Festival 2025, celebrating its 20th birthday, welcomed the return of no fewer than 4 illustrious string quartet ensembles, all with long association with the Festival: the Elias, Castalian, Belcea and Pavel Haas Quartets.  Over 5 concerts, all contributed to a project to perform the 5 late quartets of Beethoven, those with opus numbers 127, 130 (with its original Grosse Fuge finale), 131, 132 and 135.  As Op.135 performed by the Pavel Haas Quartet featured in the larger scale Closing Concert at the Bowhouse, which is covered by a separate review, this article covers the other 4 concerts, in smaller venues with the other 3 ensembles.  All of these concert paired the Beethoven with another piece played first, a shorter piece for forenoon concerts, a more substantial work before an interval in the case of evening concerts.

The evening concert of 26th June in Kilrenny Kirk kicked off the series with the Elias Quartet and featured Op.127 in E-flat.  Before the interval, the quartet were joined by violist Gary Pomeroy in Mozart’s dark G-minor Quintet K.516.  In the first movement, Mozart uses the presence of the extra viola to play with pairings in the chamber dialogue: 2 violins, 2 violas, 2 firsts or 2 seconds.  As always with the Elias Quartet, the communication between the players was ever visible and vital, not merely frequent eye contact but also upper body movement and postural echo, making the cohesion of the ensemble playing not just philosophically audible but also manifested physically.  I will never tire of seeing this.  The anxious, troubled G-minor was Mozart at his darkest.  The undanceable minuet offered no reprieve, with its unsettling accented third-beat chords, making the pathos of the lyrical major-key trio more poignantly fragile, the reprise of the grim minuet reasserting the gloom.  Major key pathos was taken to a new level in the slow movement.  Playing with mutes, an extra viola and three flats in the key signature afforded an opportunity for exquisite warm tone and rich mutually responsive phrasing, and the opportunity was grasped and exploited to the full.  It was beyond perfect and I didn’t want it to end.  The same stillness opens the finale back in gloomy (but delicious) G-minor and keeps us guessing, until the G-major 6/8 tripping Allegro dance launches and the gloom is left behind, if not forgotten.  “Hence loathed Melancholy, Of Cerberus, and blackest Midnight born”.  A fabulous reading of top-drawer Mozart.

Rich warm tutti chording with an odd metre opens the Beethoven Op.127, before E-flat major is established and a lyrical, insouciant melody embraces us.  Despite some dramatic (and very virtuosic) digressions in the development, the essentially sunny mood is restored for the sweet end of the movement.  It crams a lot into a relatively short time, though not as compressed as Op.95.  The contrast with the very expansive slow movement is remarkable, an ingeniously inventive theme-and-variations structure.  The touchingly tender quasi-improvisatory theme, with its long linked phrases, exuded candour and vulnerability, as if Beethoven was speaking intimately to only one audience member.  The first variation warmed to expressive cantabile, less guarded.  The second, trotting along with seeming confidence and affable dialogue between the violins, was genial and charming (but with hints of fragility).  The third, much slower, was hymnlike and expressive, Beethoven talking to God.  The fourth, a playful interplay of trills and arpeggios, was back in the room with us.  The fifth, suddenly slow, melancholic and mysterious, seemed to become introspective and withdrawn, the musical language or barely determinate tonality.  The final variation, released to soar with the angels, radiated serenity and contentment.  The extended coda, not really a variation but an affirmation of inner peace, was touchingly beautiful, recalling the fourth variation, but with tender lyricism fading to silence.  An extraordinary performance.  The playful, rather drunken, scherzo skipped along with abandon, nearly derailed by a dispproving cello, before the even more Bacchic trio in the minor key made the party wilder.  After a repeat of the scherzo, a false start to the trio reprise was squashed before it could get established.  Delicious mischief.  The optimistic finale opened with a theme not unrelated to the ‘Ode to Joy’ from the Ninth Symphony, with a rustic dancelike second theme, both developed imaginatively in a fairly conventional sonata form.  Towards the end, the melodies dissolved into a nebulous wash of radiant colour, exploring possible keys for the conclusion.  After a false end, another try succeeds, affirming the joy.  Fabulous.

The forenoon concert of the following morning was at the same venue, with the Castalian Quartet tackling Op.130 with the original Grosse Fuge finale.  As I had caught them in the Queen’s Hall playing exactly that in 2023’s Edinburgh International Festival (admittedly with a last minute substitution of second violinist due to illness, the amazing [then] 18-year old Runa Matsushita replacing Daniel Roberts), I knew we were in for a treat.  That said, a different kind of substitution was revealed during Svend McEwan-Brown’s introductory remarks: the programmes had been printed before he learned that the quartet have a new violist, Natalie Loughran replacing Ruth Gibson.  The Beethoven was preceded by Thomas Adès’ 1994 Quartet No.1, ‘Arcadiana’.  Its 7 short movements present different visions of Arcadia (an afterlife or alternative reality, idyllic or otherwise)  ‘Venezia notturno’, played with mutes, featured gentle rocking rhythms, dreamy harmonic glissandi and a descent into gemütlichkeit with a concluding crescendo.  ‘Das klinget so herrlich, das klinget so schön’, Monostatos and the Slaves charmed by bells in ‘The Magic Flute’, was a declamatory cello solo high in the register over strange glissandi from the others, changing to pizzicato, silenced by big chords.  ‘Auf dem Wasser zu singen’ was not even vaguely Schubertian, dominated by a wide-ranging anxious and complex first violin solo, with a crescendo to a sudden halt.  ‘Et … (tango mortale)’ was full of syncopated pizzicato chords, morbid and macabre, as if Bartók had written a tango while exploring a very different Transylvanian folk heritage (‘Et in arcadia ego’ – even in Arcadia, I (death) exist – the title of two paintings by Poussin).  ‘L’Embarquement’ (pour Cythère) is both a Watteau painting and a piece by Couperin, setting sail for the legendary birthplace of Venus, was a delicate, slightly jazzy waltz, with darker shades on the viola, a single viola note held to segue attacca into ‘O Albion’, an elegiac, yet also tender and stoic Adagio which well-nigh quoted Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’ and Beethoven’s Cavatina from the Op.130 we were about to hear.  Finally, ‘Lethe’, the river of forgetfulness in Hades (remembering that there is no letter H in the Greek alphabet), a reverie on cello giving way to ghostly answering two-note phrases spanning fifths, concluding morendo with a descending glissando.  A first hearing of a fascinating piece.

Despite the personnel being only 50% identical to the EIF performance, there was a happy sense of déjà vu about the Beethoven.  More perhaps was made of the abortive start in the Allegro in the slow introduction, before it launched optimistically in B-flat.  The magical moment when an ascending chromatic scale turns on an enharmonic sixpence and becomes G-flat major, with a wink from Beethoven to his cellist, was made more delightful by a soupçon of hesitation (are we really going to do this? – do you think anyone will notice?).  The brief scherzo with its conspiratorial tone and contrasting ‘showjumping’ trio section was every bit as delicious as before.  The third movement was played beautifully cantabile, laced with charm, the sforzandi conveying quirky elegance and not jarring (which I hate), the cello jaunty and playful when required.  When the music slides in search of a key, it sounded warmly whimsical instead of anxious.  The conclusion was gloriously mannered.  The triple-time Alla Tedesca, ballad-like, told a charming story, with surreal elements, and was quite magical.  The Cavatina, hushed and tender, yet touched profoundly by melancholy, threw the alienation of the solitary figure of the first violin into sharper relief, aware of but isolated from the warm embrace of the ensemble sound.  An episode where the first violin seems to sob uncontrollably was heartbreaking.  And the fugue?  A very brisk start and a tentative statement of the two thematic fragments whetted the appetite.  The fugue started dramatically, full of angst but with total commitment to realising equally the intellectual and emotional elements.  The moments of tenderness were allowed to speak eloquently.  A joyous fast passage makes an early appearance but is overtaken by the more anxious elements in the rich thematic store that Beethoven builds and then develops, almost obsessively and with fiendish complexity.  The underlying logic of the piece was allowed to speak and guide the flow.  In a typical Beethoven ploy, he examines a series of thematic elements for cadential possibilities, then ignores them all in favour of the first theme of the fugue to fashion the final triumphant cadence.  Hope in the face of adversity?  I should think so.

That evening, ‘Beethoven Late Quartets 3’ in Crail Church presented the Belcea Quartet in the C#-minor Quartet Op.131.  The programme was to have opened with Mozart’s Quintet in C, K.515, with Diyang Mei as the extra viola, but he was stuck in Germany with visa problems, so Mozart’s Quartet in D, K.499, nicknamed ‘Hoffmeister’, was substituted.  Its sunny opening movement is a genial sonata form, with a development section longer than many Mozart quartets, with some quite ingenious key explorations.  It was performed expressively with satisfying dynamics and vital energy.  The minuet and trio came next, in major and minor respectively, elegant and graceful.  The slow movement was characterised by sweet and radiant harmonies to begin and end, with more ingenious and daring ones in the middle.  The phrasing and cantabile playing were exquisite.  The finale tricks the ear into expecting a 6/8 jig-like dance at first, but those are triplets and the 2/4 metre is established.  Nonetheless Mozart makes much of this duality in the ensuing playfulness, with a brief fugato passage, a duel on scampering scales between the cello and viola, and a general mood of witty repartee.  Beautifully realised.

Beethoven’s Op.131 is a 7-movement work, all 7 played attacca.  It plays a central role in the 2012 film ‘A Late Quartet’, which explores the tensions between the private and professional lives of the 4 musicians of a great string quartet, aesthetic and moral integrity, vulnerability and resilience.  Unlike music criticism, I have no pretensions to the role of film critic, but nonetheless I recommend it highly.  And I recommend Op.131 itself, no less penetrating an exploration of the contradictions of the human condition.  The first movement, a slow desolate fugue of indeterminate tonality seems to traverse a bleak wasteland, but moments of tenderness and empathy emerge and after a climax, the short playful insouciant 6/8 second movement releases the tension.  The very short third movement is little more than a bridging recitative to the fourth, an extended theme-and-variations with some of the most inventive and ingeniously contrasting variations ever written by anybody.  The fifth movement is a bonkers Presto scherzo, where innocent mischief strays into what my mother would have called ‘devilment’.  Most definitely up to no good.  The sixth movement is a short slow melancholy meditation, soon interrupted to launch the assertive galloping minor-key Allegro finale.  Occasional interludes of lyricism cannot halt its determined drive, until it appears to be about to wind down.  But no, a final galloping dash and three emphatic chords hammer home the victory of the indomitable human spirit.  I have described not only my subjective internal narrative of the piece but the compelling sound pictures conjured by the Belcea Quartet that made it real.  A very fine performance of a masterpiece.

There was an unexpected encore: the slow movement of Beethoven’s last quartet, his Op.135, a piece which retains the capacity to reduce me to tears.  When I know it is coming, I do well up, but establish a vague semblance of self-control.  But this was an ambush.  And surpassingly beautiful.  So yes, I wept.  Probably best not to mention ‘stealing the thunder’ of the Pavel Haas Quartet – oops!

The following morning (Saturday 28th) brought us back to Kilrenny, the Elias Quartet and Op.132 for the forenoon concert.  Before the Beethoven, we heard a piece for string quintet, Sally Beamish’s 2011 ‘Epilogue’, with the composer as the additional violist.  A commission from Swedish chamber group Uppsala Kammarsolister, Sally introduced the piece with a tale of “writer’s block”.  Returning from a Quaker summer camp, her then teenage daughter (luthier Stephanie Irvine – Sally plays a viola of her manufacture) asked how the piece was going.  “Well”, replied Sally, “I’ve ruled the stave”.  “Ah”, said Stephanie, “a Quaker piece”, a reference to the epilogue at the end of a Quaker evening meeting, where the congregation sit in silent meditation, only ever speaking if moved by irresistible spiritual inspiration.  That remark sparked the genesis of the piece, built around a canon by Thomas Tallis, which is quoted.  By using sound-deadening practice mutes, as well as conventional mutes and unmuted instruments, different levels of stillness are achieved.  Quiet breathing is evoked by slowly rocking chords.  Interjections by individual instruments become increasingly insistent.  The canon is introduced on the violas, calming the mood to meditative stillness again.  A new phase builds to a climax, the animated solos merging to a unified re-statement of the canon.  The dynamics subside in sweet consonance to conclude with a simple cadence, morendo.  Super piece.  An epilogue that was a strangely fitting prologue to the Beethoven.

As she had with the Op.127 two days previously, first violinist Sara Bitlloch introduced Op.132.  She mentioned its arch-like 6-movement structure, with the outer pairs of movements dominated by anxiety, but the inner pair, including the ‘Heiliger Dankgesang’ (Hymn of Thanks), suffused with inner peace.  No real argument from me.  The tonally indeterminate uneasy chording of the short slow introduction keeps returning to derail any manifestations of breezy aplomb of the Allegro, dragging it back to brooding A minor.   Beethoven’s finest counterpoint, with a particularly democratic and generous approach to sharing the melodic argument equally among the instruments, was rewarded with playing of the utmost commitment and cohesion.  A relaxed cantabile reading lent an element of gracious elegance to the triple-time second movement, while the bagpipe emulation in its central section added a note of bucolic charm, rudely interrupted by a disapproving viola and cello.  And so we came to the Dankgesang in the Lydian mode.  I have written before that, of all the Greek modes (also favoured by Tallis), the Lydian’s placement of the semitone intervals has the particular peculiarity that the note we call the “dominant” is not found in the modal scale, so harmonies do not resolve conventionally and, even when a phrase ends on the tonic, it sounds as if is searching for a delayed more perfect resolution.  The resultant harmonic incompleteness and ambiguity is exploited by Beethoven to let the audience imagine itself eavesdropping on music directed at a supernatural listener, thankful for recovery from a life-threatening illness.  It was utterly sublime.  The exquisite stillness of the opening ‘chording’ (there is theoretically no such thing as ‘modal harmonies’) let the listener imagine hearing it performed on a single instrument, such as an organ (yet unmistakably string music, with the illusion that life itself, fragile but persistent, resides in the vibrations themselves).   The ‘Neue Kraft fuhlend’ (feeling renewed strength) sections seemed to depict the spirit released from mortal flesh to fly over the world.  Not for the first time, the closing bars had me in tears.  The brief Alla marcia fourth movement was striding and confident, but theatrically interrupted by a tragic first violin recitative to usher in the finale.  The finale was lyrical, but wistful and melancholy, returning to the anxieties of the first movement with a sense of “ho hum, life goes on”.  As often before, I cannot leave unmentioned the visible continuous communication between the players of this great quartet, especially with frequent eye contact and, even more especially, between the inner parts (Donald Grant and Simone van der Giessen).  As the clouds parted for the sunny A-major coda, sisters Sara and Marie Bitlloch sang in joyous unison (yes, perfect stratospheric intonation on the cello). bringing Beethoven’s Op.132 to a moving, life-affirming close.