Joseph Haydn, it’s generally agreed, invented the string quartet. And having done so, he re-invented it: again and again. Take his quartet Op. 20, No. 2, of 1772 – the first item in the Takacs Quartet’s recital last week at the Wigmore Hall.
The cello propels itself forward and upward, then starts to warble like a bird on the wing. The viola sketches in a rudimentary bass line; the second violin – higher than the cello on paper, but actually playing at a lower pitch – shadows the melody in its flight. The first violin? Nothing: the leader (or so you might imagine) of the group is entirely silent until finally, blissfully, he isn’t. It’s the opposite of how a string quartet is supposed to begin, and it’s perfect. Haydn had completed his first really convincing quartet – cracked the formula, if you like – in 1769. Just three years later, left alone with Prince Esterhazy’s court musicians in a Hungarian swamp, he’d come further than some composers travel in a lifetime.
The founding members of the Borodin Quartet signed their first contract in human blood
The Takacs Quartet laid the whole miracle out there, plain and (deceptively) simple.
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