Real treat saved till last

By WILLIAM DART


Chamber Music New Zealand has been saving its best for last with Takacs Quartet's Saturday concert of Haydn, Mendelssohn and Bartok.

The quartet was founded in 1975 by four music students in Budapest. Three decades on, only two of the original members remain - the others have been replaced by Englishmen Edward Dusinberre and Roger Tapping.

Tapping is modest when asked how he came to be in the group. "When Gabor Ormai, the original violist died, they called up everybody they knew, and somebody called me," he says. "An audition followed and the rest is history."

As a student, Tapping was in the audience when Takacs won the highly regarded Portsmouth Competition in 1978. "They were playing a Rasoumovsky Quartet," he says, "and we're still chiselling away at them."

What was the appeal of the medium in the first place? "Composers have always treated the string quartet as something special and written some of their best music for it," is just one of Tapping's justifications.

"There is something about these four voices which is so satisfying, like a phenomenon in nature that was just happened upon. It's one of those lucky inventions which started in the 18th century and had Haydn immediately writing masterpieces."

First up on Saturday is Haydn's Emperor Quartet, and Tapping is clearly a Haydn man. "String players appreciate him no end, especially those later quartets which were written for public halls and have such a grand and boisterous sound."

The Emperor is emphatically one of these. If you want a preview of Saturday's performance, there is an inspirational account of this quartet on a splendid four-CD Celebration set that has come out to coincide with the tour. This 1987 performance features Gabor Ormai and is followed by a more recent Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, done chamber-music style, with Tapping on viola.

He laughs when I mention it. The Mozart comes from a CD recorded straight after the Takacs' Bartok cycle in 1997. "Although Decca knew the Bartok would be an artistic success, they were worried it wouldn't sell and we'd better do something popular."

The Bartok gained them a Gramophone Award in 1998 and a Grammy nomination the following year - and didn't sell too badly at all.

The Celebration set and Saturday's concert include Bartok's Fourth Quartet, which Tapping feels is "one of the more approachable of the six. We have always been keen not to make it sound abstract, stressing the beauty of the slow movement, the humour of the pizzicato one.

"The last movement is not aggressive. It's more a masque, a ritual of battles and this is what humanises it."

Over the past few years, Takacs has been taking the stage with the Hungarian folk group Muszikas, weaving original folk-music in and out of Bartok's scores.

The Fourth Quartet has regularly been singled out by American critics as one of the highlights of their programmes.

"The players in Muszikas are musicologists as well," Tapping says. "They were taught by people who knew Bartok and this heritage is important to them.

"After all, the Bartok pizzicato is no modern effect but an integral part of how bass players play in folk music. Even today, villagers still live without electricity and play the music which inspired Bartok."

Also reasonably new in CD shops is the second brilliant instalment of the Takacs' Beethoven cycle, presenting the six quartets of Opus 18.

"Each one is like a couple of violin concertos," says Tapping, who draws attention to the dynamics which give these works their singularity. "Crescendos which withdraw to piano, and those rows of sforzandi."

Takacs' vivid interpretations were developed by "getting to know the man, his personality and his piano playing. The way he could stir people up, shock, and break piano strings. We found ourselves digging into the music to find this quality".

Projects at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where they are down the hallway from New Zealand's Alexa Still, include reinvestigating Mozart. They are enjoying giving the music a complete overhaul, Tapping says.

"We are starting to feel we're getting to know it a little more, finding new operatic aspects. It's a little like an old coat you're rather fond of, but which needs an overhaul."

Performance

* Who: Takacs Quartet,

* Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Sat 8pm

* On disc: Takacs Quartet, Beethoven Quartets Opus 18 (Decca 470 848); Takacs Quartet, A Celebration (Decca 476 2802)