The long-term popularity of Haydn’s The Seven Last Words among string quartets – especially in the recording studio – tends to mask the fact that it was originally an orchestral work designed for performance in a specific cathedral (Cadiz) in conjunction with biblical readings and priestly meditations. Perhaps the intimacy of the quartet genre has something to do with it (four players in seven prayerful Adagios) but when it comes to selecting comparisons, we really are spoiled for choice.
This new period-instrument recording by the recently re-established Fitzwilliam Quartet was made last year at Glasserton Church, Whithorn in the wake of a trawler disaster off the Isle of Man, and serves as a fine memorial. Violist Alan George recalls how ‘the graves of the victims...could clearly be seen through the church window, and it is this which added its own uniqueness to the performance offered here’. And it is indeed a chaste, inward reading, deeply musical, swifter than some (certainly than the Quatuor Mosaiques’ period-instrument rival – by over 10 minutes) but thoughtfully articulated and with some clarifying textual emendations ‘to bring [Haydn’s] part-writing more in line with his customary scrupulousness’. George also quotes a recent book on Haydn quartets edited by Dr David Young (Royal Nothern College of Music/Arc Publications) where the ‘lurking pitfall’ of slow tempos is seen as potentially ensnaring. That said, the Quatuor Mosaiques manage to sustain their speeds without strain and while conceding that profundity isn’t necessarily reliant on breadth of tempo, in that particular instance the leisurely speeds definitely work. The Fitzwilliam are more fluid, perhaps – notably in the Third Sonata – but no more ‘profound’.
As to digital modern-instrument rivals, my own favourite features the Czech Panocha Quartet, whose overall approach is nearer the Quatuor Mosaiques’, though special mention should be made of the Carmina Quartet, whose Fitzwilliam-style fluidity allows for the inclusion of ‘seven Gregorian Responsories for Holy Week’. A nice idea, though I’d rather stick with this beautifully balanced new recording – with Riccardo Muti’s live Salzburg/VPO account (EMI, 3/01) recommended for a compelling account of the orchestral version