The new recording is available now on the Ondine label
In The Strad’s June 2020 issue, the four members of the Tetzlaff Quartet discuss their interpretation of Beethoven’s late quartets. ’In these pieces, the truth is that you don’t always know why certain things are written the way they are,’ says second violinist Elisabeth Kufferath. ‘In that sense, they remind me of Bartók. When we played the Fourth Bartók Quartet, for example, we felt quite far from his harmonic language. On an analytical level it was difficult to understand why everything worked, but it was clear from an emotional perspective that it just did.’
Christian Tetzlaff puts it differently: ‘It isn’t easy to see where the incredible aggression in the first movement of that Bartók quartet is coming from, or what the story behind it is. The “tedesca” [of Beethoven’s op.132] is another strange movement, especially towards the end. We all start at different points in the same material and come together only in the final bars. Haydn sometimes does things like that, but here it’s taken to the extreme. It’s like Haydn on drugs.’
The new recording is available now on the Ondine label, and we have ten copies to give away. For your chance to win, simply click here to enter your details.
Closing date 31 July
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