Thursday 17 December 2009

I sometimes wonder about EMI. It does seem to me that I have often felt dissatisfaction with many of the company's post-1980 recordings. I enthused recently over Harmonia Mundi's recording quality in Isabelle Faust's Beethoven violin sonata set. Listening to the Belcea Quartet's Schubert recordings (2009, EMI) doubts surface. Individual instrument sounds and characters are lost, since there is no "air" round the recording; it almost sounds as if it were mono, recorded through headphones. It could be argued, of course, that a string quartet should sound like a blend of four instruments, not a collection of four distinct players. But the Busch Quartet was marvellous in the 1930s and one could still admire Adolf, Hermann and their colleagues.

The actual performances by the Belcea are excellent; the broad dynamic range (specified by Schubert's dynamic markings) gives the three works a sharp, bitter edge that sounds most un-Viennese but is probably much what Schubert wanted. More controversial, for me, is the Belcea's decision to obey the repeat markings in the opening movements of both the C major Quintet and the last G major quartet. Composers mark repeats for all kinds of reasons: from habit or convention, to form a logical, balanced structure, or to enable newcomers to recognise the new material being presented before the subject matter is developed in the development section. It is this last reason, I suspect, that persuaded Schubert to mark the long expositions of the first movements of these two works to be repeated (as he did with the last, B flat major piano sonata). However, with a recording that one can play over and over again for years, this "familiarity" reason disappears. The first movements sound too long, and the overall structure of the works is disrupted.

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