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Edward Komara
GARY A GALO(EDITOR)
Végh Quartet. Music & Arts CD 1084 (7 CDs). (Recorded 1952; originally released in 1954 by Haydn Society, Reissued 2001).
A history of Beethoven string quartet recordings would make fascinating reading. The variety of approaches to performing the 16 quartets (especially the difficult last five) and the Grosse Fuge evolved in parallel with the improvements in recording technology and playback formats. 78-rpm discs through the late 1940s could present only monaural sound in constricted sonic range, and the limited 4 1/2 minutes playing time per record side meant that many Beethoven quartet movements had to be split in two or more parts. Still, the Lener Quartet complete cycle and the Busch Quartet recordings set many critical expectations at that time. The vinyl LP in the late 1940s made possible uninterrupted presentations of movements, indeed of some complete quartets, on one 20 to 25 minute side. While the vivid rendering of the four-instrument interaction would have to wait until stereo tape, monaural tape had a greater sonic range than the 78-rpm disc.
Hence the mono LP era (1948-1958) saw the release of many notable if sonically limited Beethoven quartet recordings. Convenient benchmarks would be the Budapest String Quartet cycle for Columbia in 1951-1952, and the Hollywood String Quartet recordings of the later quartets for Capitol in 1957. In between were the various series by such ensembles as the Pascal String Quartet (for the Chamber Music Society label), the Végh Quartet (Haydn Society), the Hungarian String Quartet (EMI), the Barylli Quartet (Westminster), and the Vienna Konzerthaus Quartet (Westminster). The Végh cycle, recorded in Paris in 1952, has been reissued on Music & Arts at a budget price that would be about 1/6
th
the cost of collecting the original Haydn Society LPs.
p.118
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