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Guarneri Quartet: The Hungarian Album = DOHNANYI:

String Quartet No. 2 in D-flat Major, Op. 15; String Quartet
No. 3 in A Minor, Op. 33; KODALY: String Quartet No. 2, Op.
10 - Guarneri String Quartet - RCA Red Seal
As fine a “farewell” gesture from the Guarneri as anything they have
played over the course of an illustrious career.

Published on February 16, 2009

Guarneri Quartet: The Hungarian Album = DOHNANYI: String

Quartet No. 2 in D-flat Major, Op. 15; String Quartet No. 3 in A
Minor, Op. 33; KODALY: String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10 - Guarneri
String Quartet (Arnold Steinhardt, violin; John Dalley, violin;
Michael Tree, viola; Peter Wiley, cello)

RCA Red Seal 88697158382, 70:45 ****:

On 28 November 2008, I attended one of several “farewell” concerts by the Guarneri
String Quartet, having performed before the public since 1964 and now disbanding, so the
individual members might pursue their own interests. Except for the replacement of cellist
David Soyer with Peter Wiley, the membership had remained intact, their sound having
attained its lean, muscular drive and incisive, homogeneous tone in the late 1960s, after a
shaky start at SUNY Binghamton, where I first heard them in their role as artists-in-
residence. These inscriptions, made 2004-2006, will likely figure among the last of their
commercial recording ventures. The accompanying booklet, by the way, is a lovely
postcard from Budapest.

Dohnanyi’s Second Quartet (1906) reveals influences from both Dvorak and Brahms,
though its haunted atmosphere in the first movement pays a debt or two to early
Schoenberg. Emphatic and nostalgic at once, the opening Andante--Allegro exploits the
sixth degree of the D-flat scale, invoking dialogue between first violin and cello. The F
Minor Presto acciacato proves a driven, obsessive scherzo in syncopated figures from
above, over a menacing series of ostinato riffs in the cello. The F Major trio section clears
the emotional debris, with John Dalley’s providing quicksilver eighth notes in the second
violin part. The cello returns with its mad dance, now supported by a syncopated viola who
soon moves to a dominant pedal point and on to spasmodic coda. Dohnanyi changes the
color of his quartet by opening the last movement in C-sharp Minor rather than its
enharmonic, major key of origin. In an extended, often grim dirge utilizing cyclic
principles, Dohnanyi recalls elements from the second, F Minor, movement; then we have
contrapuntal episodes that superimpose the opening, yearning theme of movement one
onto the heady mix that ends, luminously, in D-flat Major. Arnold Steinhardt’s superheated
recitative captures our attention, as do the constant, alternately impulsive and melodic
figures from cellist Peter Wiley.

Kodaly’s Quartet No. 2 (1916) opts for a decidedly Magyar sensibility, a folk idiom in which
harsh dissonances and clashing moments of bitonality prove welcome. From the outset in
6/8, bird calls and open-fifth drone effects permeate the modal, eerily melodic textures
that would like to land on D Major but do not always conform to this sense of stability.
Steinhardt’s violin solo near the end of the movement might remind some auditors of The
Lark Ascending by Vaughan Williams. Violin and cello dominate the opening of the second
movement, which is itself subdivided into two sections. Much of the writing casts an
improvisatory ethos on the proceedings; chunks and fits and starts of melodic tissue
emerge, only to dissolve into airy effects. Then, a decided folk tune arises from the viola,
then some rising fifths quasi religioso; and now, the heavy-footed gypsy dance opens in
earnest--Allegro giocoso--with drones and pizzicati aplenty. The texture thickens mightily,
rife with syncopations and rocket figures in Hungarian style over rocking colors that move
to an energetic, wild coda clearly planted on D Major.

Dohnanyi’s Third Quartet (1926) opens with the sound of Brahms, both elegiac and
agitated. The music gravitates between A Minor and A Major, the sonata-form structure
modeled on the Brahms originals in A Minor and C minor, Op. 51. Nice work between the
violins and Michael Tree’s plaintive viola, especially as they move to a heated episode that
ends the exposition proper. The development section projects a sturm und drang affect,
turbulent, martial, modal, rhythmically charged. The recap, still superheated, becomes
symphonic is sonority, rich, thick, passionate. The Andante movement in A Major is a
series of variations on the opening chorale, utilizing shortened and extended versions of
the note-values, adding supplementary motifs at the various periods of transition. The last
movement lends a page to Bartok’s Violin Concerto, since the same pitches appear as in
the first movement, but now in a vibrant, galloping, excited rhythm and pungent,
chromatic harmonies. The second theme evokes a sultry tango, then it reverts to the
undulant, gypsy motif with its skipping intervals of a ninth. The torrid coda will make as
fine a “farewell” gesture from the Guarneri as anything they have played over the course
of an illustrious career.

--Gary Lemco