Next month, after more than four decades as one of the world’s leading string quartets, the Emerson Quartet will give their final concerts. Their last disc before they go their separate ways is built around one of the cornerstones of the 20th-century quartet repertoire, a work they had never recorded before. Schoenberg’s Second Quartet is remarkable not only for including settings for soprano of poems by Stefan George in its final two movements, but also as the piece in which he took his first tentative steps into the unknown world of atonality, even though in its closing bars the music returns to the safety of F sharp major.
Alban Berg’s Op 3 Quartet, completed in 1910, two years after his teacher Schoenberg’s Second but not published until 10 years later, makes a logical companion piece, and the Emersons give both works warm, lustrous performances, more generous than many of their earlier, more objective recordings. Barbara Hannigan is the soprano in the Schoenberg, her elegance and cool, precise shaping of every phrase perfectly tailored to the keenly expressive vocal lines, though the recording seems to place her voice just a bit too far forward in the audio picture.
There’s also room on the disc for a couple of beautifully rendered rarities, both unearthed by Hannigan. Hindemith’s Melancholie sets four poems by Christian Morgenstern for soprano and quartet; it was composed during the last years of the first world war, when Hindemith’s music was much closer to the expressionist world of the Second Viennese School than to his own later neoclassicism. But the real discovery is Chausson’s Chanson Perpétuelle, a setting for soprano, quartet and piano (Bertrand Chamayou here) of a poem of abandoned love by Charles Cros, which though less than eight minutes long seems to encapsulate a whole world of tragedy with operatic intensity.
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This week’s other pick
Schoenberg is also the focus of Transfiguration, the latest Chandos disc from the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, on which they are joined by the soprano Francesca Chiejina. The original string sextet version of Verklärte Nacht, in a nicely expansive, supple performance, provides that focus, alongside Alexander Zemlinsky’s Maiblumen blühten Überall, settings for soprano and quartet of poems by Richard Dehmel (also the author of the poem on which Verklärte Nacht is based), Anton Webern’s early piano quintet and a group of songs by Alma Mahler, arranged for soprano and string sextet by Tom Poster. It’s a thoughtfully linked collection, beautifully presented.
