LÉNER QUARTET The Beethoven Quartets Vol. 3: The Late Quartets (1926-35) - PACM110

This release concludes Pristine’s critically acclaimed (Diapason d’Or, Fanfare annual “Want List”) series of the complete Beethoven string quartets performed by the Léner Quartet.

While the pioneering 78 rpm sets of the Beethoven symphonies and sonatas for piano, violin and cello recorded between the wars by Weingartner, Schnabel, Kreisler and Casals, respectively, have been available periodically or continually over the succeeding decades, this first complete traversal of his string quartets has been “missing in action” for most of the time, reissued complete only in Japan.

Part of the reason seems to have been the change in tastes that occurred during the ten year period (1926-36) it took for the Léners to complete their cycle. Their old-fashioned playing style, marked by the use of portamenti, ample string tone and highly personalized interpretation, seemed antiquated even before the 1930s were over in comparison to groups like the Schneider-led Budapest Quartet. Yet, it is precisely these features which have drawn modern listeners to their recordings in recent years as an antidote to more literal performances.

The bulk of the Léner cycle was recorded in late 1926 and early the following year, when the group set down twelve of the sixteen Beethoven quartets in the ample acoustic of Wigmore Hall in London. Opp. 127, 130 and 135 in the present release date from this period. Op. 127 was, oddly, the only quartet in this series that was not released by American Columbia; it has been transferred here from early laminated British pressings, while the remainder have come from U.S. Viva-Tonal, Royal Blue and Full-Range discs.

As Tully Potter has written, “The Léner legacy is a collector’s dream, as one can accumulate several versions of some 78 rpm sides. In certain cases, individual sides were changed when sets were already in production.” In his English Columbia discography, Ronald Taylor lists two versions of Op. 135 that were issued in the UK: one with take numbers 2-1-3-2-1-2, all recorded in November, 1926; and a second with takes 2-4-5-2-4-2, which incorporates remakes done in March of 1927. The American Columbia copy used here offers a third alternative (with no take number listed for the second side): 2-?-3-1-1-2. It’s likely that the take used for Side 2 came from the 1926 session, as none of the later take numbers show up here. A 1935 remake of Op. 135 was used for the Japanese EMI CD set, but I have chosen to present the earlier version here.

Of the four quartets not taken down during these early electric sessions, one (Op. 18/5) had to wait until 1936 for its first Léner recording, while the remaining three (Op. 74, on Volume 2 of our series, and Opp. 131 and 132 presented here) had only recently been issued in acoustic versions by the group. Their performance of Op. 132, at least in its earlier incarnation, has a literary connection. As Potter notes, it “achieved its niche in the hall of fame by being featured in the final chapter of Aldous Huxley’s 1928 novel Point Counter Point. They players were not named, but the Léner set was the only one available and Huxley’s mention of ‘four Hungarians’ put the matter beyond doubt. The description of the Heiliger Dankgesang and its effect on the character Spandrell, in the last minutes of his life, is a tribute to the intensity of the performance.”

The odd man out, as it were, in this series is the Grosse Fuge, which the Léners recorded only once. Pace Wikipedia, it was not the first recording of the work (the early Budapest Quartet beat them by three years); and like the 1928 remake of Op. 18/1 in our first volume, it was recorded neither in Wigmore Hall nor Abbey Road, but in English Columbia’s Petty France, London studios. The pitch drop that plagued all the original sides from the 1926-27 sessions has here been corrected using the latest computerized restoration software, and Op. 130 has been presented out of order so that it could be coupled with its original finale, the Grosse Fuge, on the same CD.