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This is what I've been longing to hear in the Adagio of Schubert's C-Major Quintet ever since 1935.It is amusing to read the reviews that were published when this recording first appeared on LP, in the late 1970s (it was recorded in 1973, a joint venture of EMI and Supraphon, but apparently stayed in EMI's vaults for five years; I've found no trace of a Supraphon release). In The Gramophone issue of May 1979 for instance:"The Adagio of Schubert's C major Quintet is one of the most sublime slow movements ever written. Several famous artists have confessed that there is nothing they would rather hear on their death-bed than its heart-easing, even if sometimes also searing strains, and probably hundreds of other unknown music lovers secretly feel the same way. So it is utterly incomprehensible to me how a team as distinguished as the Smetana Quartet can destroy its spirit by playing it so fast. Schubert's time-signature is 12/8, and by opting for a time-signature of quaver 120 they almost succeed in transforming the opening theme, which should sound suspended in the air outside time, into something akin to a brisk march". The critic in the French magazine Harmonie of November 1978, the famous musicologist Harry Halbreich, was even more horrified: "the Smetana Quartet is one of the best of today (...), Milos Sadlo, a veteran of the Czech cello school. In spite of that, this record is categorically to be rejected. This harsh interpretation clocks, incredibly, at 41 minutes [in italics] (against more than 50 for all the rival versions, and 57 and a half for the sublime version of the Melos Quartet with Rostropovich recently released by DG). Still, the first movement, filled with a superb virile thrust, convinces without reservation, and the finale is also overall excellent, despite an excessively rushed coda-stretto. But the artists have obviously understood nothing of the sublime adagio, tossed off, you won't believe it, IN LESS THAN 10 MINUTES, which deprives it of any musical or spiritual meaning. The same ignorance of this essential feature of Schubert, the unfolding of time ["l'essentielle durée Schubertienne"], is manifest in the trio of the scherzo, as insanely rushed - to say nothing of the fact that the second repeat of the scherzo itself isn't played. These excellents artists really give the impression that they were in a hurry to get it over with! Coming right after the release of the Melos-Rostropovich version, which is bound to dominate the competition for the years to come, the distribution in France of this realization, not even recent (it was recorded in 1974) was really not a necessity!" Halbreich isn't entirel honest in his comparing the timings of Smetana and Melos, since the former do not play the first movement repeat and the latter do. To make things comparable he should have added the 5:17 minutes of Smetana's exposition or subtracted the 5:19 of Melos'. Also, contrary to his claim, Smetana's Adagio is not "under 10 minutes", but clocks at 10:05: maybe Halbreich's turtable turned too fast, or the LP was cut at a pitch slightly too high, which often happened. But one gets his point. For reference, the customary Adagios ran anywhere between 13:00 and 15:40, and Melos' was particularly slow, at 15:59.So, no wonder that the Smetana Quartet's LP didn't last long in the catalogs. And maybe it is because the big shots at EMI anticipated something like that that they kept it so long under wraps.But times and sensibilities change, and it is amusing also to observe that this Testament reissue, from 1998, got the accolades from the French Diapason magazine, a glowing review in Fanfare by Mortimer H. Frank ("One might argue, too, that this andante-like tempo provides a more suitable complement to the preceding movement, which, with the Smetana, is both gruff, gentle, rhythmically flexible, and yet tautly organized with a firmly controlled pulse. Completed by a tough, driving Scherzo and a finale that never sags and thus sounds musically stronger than in many other performances, this Smetana account is well worth investigating. If it does not quite equal the Casals-dominated performance (Sony), it is, nonetheless, first-rate, right down to the final chord, where the group's diminuendo boasts a rarely encountered strength and purpose.") and one in The Gramophone that wasn't so dismissive ("No tempo alteration is marked in the score and I have to say that although I find the results quite refreshing, the actual phrasing seems a trifle bland, certainly in comparison with the Smetana's best rivals (my own favourites include Casals, Heifetz, and the Hagens)."The liner notes of Tully Potter are, as usual, a goldmine of information on the ensemble's biography, but there is one of his claim that I must take exception with, when he maintains that the players "allowed themselves to be influenced by an interventionist producer [Gerd Berg] who felt strongly that as there was no tempo change marked in the score, the tempo of the outer sections of the sublime adagio should be matched to that of the central section", and even "changed their interpretation on the spot".Now come on! Does Tully Potter really want us to believe that an ensemble as distinguished as the Smetana Quartet and the greatest Czech cellist, Milos Sadlo, would on the spot change their interpretation, betray their innermost feelings about how this sublime music should sound, just because some producer ordered them to? OK, we know that this was post-1968 Czechoslovakia, not precisely the land of freedom, but was the guy a Stalinist political kommissar? "Change it on the spot, or you'll be sent on the spot to the Gulag in Siberia where you can discuss music with Solzhenitsin?" I want a member of the Smetana Quartet to confirm this to me if I'm going to give a semblance of credence to it (but Potter's notes do seem based on interviews with members of the Quartet...). If the Smetana attempted it that way, it is because they felt it deserved to be attempted. And there is more evidence pointing to the fact that, far from giving in to the pressure of a bullying producer, the Smetana quartet gave lots of thought to the issue(s) of tempo relationship in Schubert's work.Anyway, like, presumably, Gerd Berg, I've long been intrigued by the fact that the score bears no tempo change for the "fast" and agitated middle section of the Adagio - just more notes per beat, syncopations (the old device for expressing emotional turbulence), staccato triplets. Still, virtually every performing ensemble has simply disregarded that fact. Maybe with some justification (I mean, other than "instinct" or "performing traditions", not always the best guides). The circumstances of composition of the Quintet are shrouded in mystery (very informative liner notes on the Hyperion recording, accessible on their website, Google search "schubert string quintet Hyperion CDA66724"), Schubert sent it to a publisher, who wasn't interested, then he died, and the composition resurfaced only in 1850, and was published in 1853 (the parts only). The manuscript is now lost. So maybe the absence of any tempo change is an omission of Schubert, or of his posthumous publisher. Not impossible: there are other disputed points about the score, like what was long construed as a decrescendo sign on the last chord of the finale but is now thought to be a big accent (I much prefer the decrescendo. What a great ending, not in a bang, but in a whimper), or where the second repeat bar of the Scherzo should be placed (recent practice puts it earlier than at the "fine" bar, but I am more bothered by that option than by the traditional one). For the record, the Smetanas do not take the first movement exposition repeat, which was customary in LP days, but also do not play the big chord just before the repeat bar at 5:14, which some musicologists have argued should indeed be reserved to playing the repeat. I personally find its absence somewhat jarring, but it is a small detail.So, in effect, most versions do as if the score was missing the tempo indication (something like "più presto") that Schubert (they imply) certainly intended, since virtually everybody steps on the gas pedal, significantly to dramatically, when comes the middle section.But then, you can consider that the score as it is is exactly what Schubert had in mind: no tempo change, same tempo in the "slow" and the "fast" (or rather: agitated) part, and that, before taking for granted that the outer sections should be "slow" and the middle one "fast", performers might try and do it as the score has it. One thing that bears out this option is the consideration that this is exactly what Schubert does in the first movement. As everybody familiar with the Quintet will know, it starts with a slow introduction, before settling into its typical march rhythm that develops into vehement shouts. Only, there is no "slow introduction", it is exactly the same beat, but Schubert gives the impression of a slow introduction by writing very long note values that span two bars and 8 beats. So there is a case for believing that this "diversity in unity" might well be a fundamental process running through the Quintet.But then, how do you achieve that unity of pulse in the Adagio, while still making musical and emotional sense of it? Two ways. One was approached (but approached only) by Archibudelli, when they took a very slow middle section, to match their slow tempo for the Adagio (but to an extent only; metronomically, they still did accelerate considerably, although it wasn't really perceptible) . Not very convincing. Their middle section sounded something like the agitation of an arthritis-crippled elderly (see my review of Schubert: String Quintet in C, D. 956 / Rondo in A, D. 438).So the other option is the opposite, and the one suggested (if Potter is to be believed) by the Smetana's producer: take a "slow" that is already "fast", at the tempo that you want to give to the middle and agitated section.But in fact, there was nothing really new there. We forgot (and the various reviewers certainly weren't aware of it), but in the early days of recording, Schubert's Adagio was paced very briskly. Just look at a few timings for the A section of the Adagio:The Cobbett Quartet (premiere recording, in 1925, downloadable from Pristine Classical): 3:19The London String Quartet, 1928 (available as download or CD form Pristine Classical, and also downloadable free (lossless flac files) but with the different 78s sides not patched together, from CHARM, the research centre on the History and Analysis of Recorded Music): 4:07The Wendling Quartet, 1934 (they recorded the Adagio only, recording reissued on Japan EMI Shinsheido Great Recordings of German & Austrian String Quartets, vol. 8, SGR-8508): 4:01Pro Arte Quartet, 1935 (The Pro Arte Quartet play Schubert: Quintet for 2 violins, viola & 2 cellos in C major, D. 956 / Brahms: String Sextet No. 1 in B flat major, Op. 18): 3:47Hollywood Quartet 1951 (Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht; Schubert: Quintet): 4:20Stern-Casals and other luminaries in Prades, 1952 (Schubert: Quintet Op. 163, D.956 [Germany]): 4:30.So when Heifetz and friends took it in 3:18 in 1961 and everybody thought Heifetz was doing what Heifetz did, e.g. playing everything much too fast, in fact he was only playing like they played it in his youth (Quintet in C).And compare that to the Melos Quartet and Rostropovich in 1977 (Schubert: String Quintet In C Major, D. 956): 5:54. The "slow" approach was inaugurated as early as 1941 by the Budapest Quartet, Schubert: Piano Quintet, Op. 114, D. 667 ("The Trout"); String Quintet, Op. Post. 163, D. 956 (Recorded 8 May 1950, Washington [Trout] and 16 September 1941, New York [String Quintet]) (5:10), followed by the Wiener Konzerthaus Quartet in the early 1950s, Quintet In C (5:03), but it was the exception rather than the norm back then. Things started changing in the 1960s. Most versions in the last thirty years have been anywhere between 4:30 (Isaac Stern in 1993, Schubert: Quintet,D.956 / Boccherini: Quintet,Op.13,No.5) and 5:30 (the Marlboro ensemble led by Felix Galimir, 1986, Schubert: Quintet in C major,D.956 / The Shepherd on the Rock).Other than bygone interpretive traditions, there is a strong grounding in the score for adopting a flowing tempo in the Adagio: Schubert's 12/8 time signature. This implies not an equal stress on each eighth-note, as the "slow" approaches tend to do it (changing the implied time signature into something closer to a 12/4), but a stress per beat and four beats per bar, giving the typical swaying lilt of the ternary rhythm. There is also much evidence, too abundant to mention here, to consider that the notion of an "adagio", up until Mahler's time at least, was much faster than the way it was construed in the 20th century. The Schubert sense of "time unfolding" so dear to musicologist Harry Halbreich is not so much inherent to Schubert as a 20th century conception, and possibly mis-conception, of Schubert, maybe not an essential of Schubert, but more an essential of our contemporary interpretation of Schubert.With the stage now set for the contest - what about Smetana? Well, OK, if you take Heifetz as a yardstick for interpretive extremism (as I do), then Smetana are the extremists' radicals: 2:59. And now is time for the jury to step back in, with the verdict. How does it sound, and feel?In all honesty - it doesn't work. And remember: nobody is more well-disposed than I am, I've longed to hear this, and I am always open-minded and wide-eared for the "alternative" approach. The problem I think with the way the Smetana realize their plan is twofold.First, they are simply too fast. If, at 3:18, Heifetz was (too) extreme, than what about 2:59? The Gramophone reviewer was right: it becomes an urgent and anguished march, not an Adagio (and the bridge passage after the middle section, back to the opening theme, at 6:17, with its achingly tender violin bits of phrases over cello sixteenth-note upward scales, sounds like the maiden weakly crying for help from the buzzing bumblebee), and, as hard as I try and as well disposed as I am, as many amends as I am ready to make for the evolution of tastes and sensibilities and whatever my conviction that the very notion of what is an adagio has fundamentally changed in two centuries, I can't pull myself into believing that this is what Schubert had in mind and what his music is about. He would not have written "Adagio" in that case, but "allegretto", "andantino", "adagietto", "andante" or whatever - all those were indications commonly used by Beethoven and Schubert in their "slow" movements (or rather, what the 20th century has construed as "slow" movements). Look at the 9th Symphony, or the famous theme and variations in "The Death and the Maiden" Quartet: "Andante con moto"; or the 15th Quartet: "Andante un poco moto". But no, here, Schubert used "Adagio". To me, what sounds just right is the Pro Arte's 3:47: there, the forward motion never sacrifices the naturalness and gentleness of the swaying lilt.Problem number two: the Smetanas STILL accelerate perceptibly in the agitated section in, I presume, an attempt to still bring a strong sense of contrast. In itself their middle section is superb, uniquely urgent and dramatic - but it is, frustratingly, not really consistent with what the whole project was about. So why all this, to finally end up blundering it anyway? And not that it was expressively necessary either: numerous examples (like: the Pro Arte Quartet, the Endres Quartet in 1958 - but I'm now out of authorized product links -, the famous 1965 version by the Amadeus Quartet, the Alban Berg Quartet, the Lindsay Quartet in 1985, the Marlboro ensemble in 1986) have shown that a relatively or even very held-back tempo in the central section translates in no loss of vehemence. In fact the Smetana's middle section would have fit better in a "traditional" approach, with normally slow outer sections: then that contrast would have been really gripping.Ultimately, then, too bad: an opportunity frustratingly lost to reiterate in a modern version what the Pro Arte Quartet masterfully achieved in 1935, but with agogics and expression (to say nothing of the sonics) that are now badly dated. But, as we know, Schubert didn't just write an Adagio. He framed it with three other movements. In the liner notes, Tully Potter quotes Smetana's cellist Antonin Kohout commenting upon Franco Rossi, the cellist from the famous Quartetto Italiano: "Rossi is a much better cellist than I am - Rossi is a poet, I am a farmer". Well, you do hear that in the Smetana Quartet's Schubert. This is not the kind of refined and sophisticated interpretation you might have expected of Quartettto Italiano. The Czech players dive into it with extraordinary vigor, gusto and earthiness, with spotless ensemble and glowing tone, a naturalness in the choices of tempo and a perfect blend, in the two outer movements, of the urgently dramatic and the laid-back lyrical. And while I might otherwise be enclined to take exception with the way they slow down markedly on the first movement's second subject, at 1:56 (it is a commonly-used device for pressing out, or so the performers think, the maximum lyricism from the music, but listening experience shows that it tends to sentimentalize the lyricism, where keeping the forward motion, like the Hollywood Quartet or the Stern-Casals group, makes it even more intense), I must grant that the Smetana's tone is so glowing as to conjure here an affecting taste of the Bohemian country-side as depicted in sounds by Dvorak. Never before had I been made so aware of the Dvorak anticipations in the C-Major Quintet.But Kohout's comment about being a farmer is also deceptive. I think these guys were actually logicians and mathematicians disguised as farmers. Critic Harry Halbreich was miffed by what he felt was their "insanely rushed" trio in the Scherzo (it's an exaggeration; it is brisk, but not insanely so), but for all his musicological expertise he simply failed to hear that they were simply, there again, keeping a unity of beat with their tempo in the outer sections, the dotted half-note of the Scherzo (circa 104-108/minute) becoming the quarter note of the trio (and Halbreich also failed to note that the indication for the trio is "Andante sostenuto", not "Adagio"). Diversity within unity again: ain't no farmer who ever thought about that - not in Texas anyway. And the coda-stretto which Harry Halbreich also took exception with - I've never heard it so exhilarating.So, that's the Adagio I long wanted to hear, but now, in view of the outstanding quality of the other three movements, I even regret that the Smetana partners took such a radically extremist approach of it. It is simply too quirky, too radical and unconvincing and, yes, invalidates what would have otherwise been one of the greatest versions ever recorded. As it is, if you still consider buying this CD be aware that it is for three great movements and a curio.Am I done with the Adagio I longed to hear, then? Not quite. Now I wish that an ensemble would make a recording of the C-Major Quintet as great as the Smetana Quartet's or other great versions in the other movements, and at the Pro Arte Quartet's tempo in the Adagio, naturally flowing but not madly rushed like Smetana or Heifetz, and keep that tempo in the middle section, e.g. rather held-back, but vehement. So, anybody out there who'd be willing to do that? Hello? Anybody listening?Hey, maybe I can become a producer, and persuade a major ensemble to change their conception on the spot.I'll return to the Brahms Quartet... whenever. It sounds fine, wonderfully Bohemian, but it's been too long since I really plunged into the work and its recordings and I need to refresh my comparative listening before giving a truly informed opinion.
