Music Review | Belcea Quartet: Timeless Daring Revealed, With A Probing Restraint

The majority of string quartets founded by conservatory students flush with idealism do not survive. But ever since Corina Belcea-Fisher, a Romanian violinist, brought together student colleagues from the Royal College of Music in London to found the Belcea Quartet in 1994, the ensemble has thrived. Understandably, for it is technically accomplished and uncommonly probing.

The violinists Corina Belcea-Fisher, left, and Laura Samuel of the Belcea Quartet.

The quartet has earned accolades on international tours and released valuable recordings on EMI Classics, most recently a two-CD album of the six Bartok string quartets. Along the way the quartet has undergone some typical changes of personnel. Its roster now includes the violinist Laura Samuel, a founding member; the violist Krzysztof Chorzelski; and the cellist Antoine Lederlin.

For its important appearance in Zankel Hall on Friday night the group offered what on paper looked like a not particularly adventurous program: a Haydn quartet; Bartok’s Third Quartet, which has achieved near-staple status; and Schubert’s very familiar “Death and the Maiden” Quartet. Yet the musicians conveyed the timeless daring in these works, especially in Haydn’s extraordinary Quartet in D (Op. 20, No. 4) from 1772, the year the composer turned 40.

Haydn is up to his typical mischief in this complex work, and the Belcea players captured the humor and boldness in their cagey performance. Just below the deceptively beguiling surface of the opening movement are all manner of curiosities.

Its main theme keeps being interrupted by a rhythmically insistent four-note motif. Harmonies are jarred by slippery chromatic inner voices. Phrases that pass by blithely are actually constructed from a series of strange fragments. The third movement, Menuetto, is like a Cubist facsimile of the standard dance form, full of jerky rhythms and unexpected accents. It sounds like a menuetto that broke into pieces, which Haydn then impishly reassembled in the wrong way.

Bartok’s teeming Third Quartet (1927), just 17 minutes long, is generated from his ingenious manipulation of small thematic cells and rhythmic figurations. On one level, it comes across like a shockingly modernistic version of a folkloric Hungarian fantasy. The Belcea Quartet (pronounced BELL-chuh) captured its wildness and radicalism without indulging in superficial theatrics or overblown effects. The intelligence and honesty of the playing was as impressive as its energy and vehemence.

Many quartets emphasize the volatility and dark intensity of Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden.” The Belcea players approached the work with refreshing restraint, allowing tempos enough time for intricacies to register, even in the turbulent final Presto. In this account the work seemed so formidable and emotionally complex that there was nothing more to say. So it was not surprising that, despite a long ovation, the group played no encore.

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