Lebrecht Weekly | Doric String Quartet Strikes a Perfect Balance Between Beethoven’s Early Quartets and Later Milestones

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The fashion these days is to remix the 16 Beethoven quartets, selecting one from each period – early, middle and late – in concert and record cycles. It doesn’t always work, but the latest release from the Doric String Quartet, a mid-career UK ensemble, strikes a perfect balance between two of the opus 18 quartets and major milestones from later on.

Opus 18/2 in G major is one of Beethoven’s invitations to the dance, a proposition more in the mind than on the floor. Opus 18/5 in A is all in the mind, one of his most self-contemplative works, so early it’s still 18^th century. The Dorics make a virtue of these contrasts, opening each work with a quizzical expression – is this what he really meant? The Minuet of opus 18/5 is like dancing to a Wittgenstein aphorism, a philosophical puzzle with a musical sidewinder.

Each of these early works finds a later match. The G major is paired with the massive B-flat major opus 130, a work where Beethoven takes leave of commercial constraints. Two middle movements offer a German dance and a cavatina, the latter so ghostly it is scary. Beethoven ended the quartet with the 15-minute Grosse Fuge. Publishers said it was too long, so he substituted a ten minute alternative. Both are played here, an instructive choice for the listener.

The final item is opus 59/2 in E minor, dated 1806. The French army have occupied Vienna and Beethoven has sought protection from the Russian ambassador, Count Razumovsky, who employs four string players to entertain his guests. There’s a Russian tune in the third movement. The rest is pure, indomitable Beethoven. There’s nothing flashy about the playing, either. This is music to make you rethink what you once knew. That way, the pleasure lasts longer.

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