Beethoven, who hardly traveled, is frequently enthroned as the most universal of composers.
The Ébène Quartet has taken the
dictum
at face value and has recorded a major portion of its production in seven cities throughout the world: Philadelphia, Vienna, Tokyo, São Paulo, Melbourne, Nairobi (the political situation in Mali prevented let it be Bamako, as planned) and, of course, Paris.
This last concert was held on January 27 of this year, just four days after the French played the same program at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn and officially presented their project, entitled
Beethoven Around the World.
, with a dialogue for five with Richard Kinley and the projection of a video as a logbook of his world journey.
As Pierre Colombet, the first violin, affirmed then, each of these 16 works will be for them already indissolubly linked to each of the cities where they played and recorded them between May 2019 and January 2020. A few weeks later, without However, his plans for the celebration of the Beethovenian anniversary were undone by the closure of concert halls and the drastic suspension of musical life throughout the world.
Fortunately, the fruits conceived and illuminated before the global collapse continue to emerge now and this integral is called to be one of the most admired and enduring.
Even more than his symphonies or his piano sonatas, the string quartets show us the three paradigmatic styles of Beethoven, those that Franz Liszt metaphorized as those decanted by “
l'adolescent, l'homme, le dieu
”.
Hearing precisely the quartets, however, one is tempted to reverse the last two terms, because, after the youthful creator of the six
Quartets op.
18
, the creator of the three that make up his
op.
59
(the same as the
“Heroica”
) is perhaps more divine –for its revolutionary potential and disruptive of the classical models– than human, a quality much more perceptible in its last five contributions to the genre (from
op. 127
to
op 135
), decidedly inclined towards the intimate and confessional sphere.
With two decades of experience behind him, and regained stability with the splendid violist Marie Chilemme, the Ébène offers us a full, intense Beethoven, in permanent reinvention.
The level is very high at all times, but there are numerous peaks that currently only seem within the reach of the Belcea Quartet, whose Beethoven may at times be more resounding, but perhaps not as homogeneous as that of Ébène, which has achieved a balance of forces and interaction of its four members practically perfect.
Summits of mention and obligatory listening are, for example, the slow movement of the
Quartet op.
18 no.
1
, whose waves of emotion (and silence) wash over everything in their path;
the compactness of the
initial
quasi-symphonic
Allegro
of
op.
59 no.
2
;
at the almost opposite extreme, the entirety of
op.
95
, an accurate stab;
the "song of thanksgiving" from
op.
132
, played with the renewed strength and fragility of a convalescent;
or the adrenaline overdose and ultramodernity of the
Great Escape
, some of whose parts "could have been hatched on a space satellite," in Stravinsky's words.
These seven records compress the greatness and incessant metamorphosis of Beethoven's genius like few others.
Beethoven Around the World
.
Ebène Quartet.
Erato / Warner Classics.
7 CD.