Hagen Quartett - Beethoven: String Quartets, Opp. 127 & 132 (2005)

These are hardly the Hagen Quartett's first recordings of Beethoven's quartets. The group made its first Beethoven recordings back in 1997 with the Fugue for String Quartet, Op. 137, and the original version of Opus 18/6 for DG's Complete Beethoven Edition. But those early recordings, while breathtakingly good, cannot compare with later recordings of Beethoven's canonical quartets, climaxing with this coupling of Opus 127 and Opus 132, except in the sense that the same excellent ensemble made all of them. The quick intelligence, pointed ensemble, lean sonority, and powerful expressivity that have characterized all of the Hagen Quartett's recordings is all once again plentifully in evidence here, but there is something more in these performances, something clearer and stronger and more luminous. The Hagen has always responded forcefully to challenges -- recall its earlier Janácek and Webern recordings -- and here the challenges are immensely high. To falter in the empyrean realms of Beethoven's late quartets -- as the Budapest, Guarneri, and Emerson quartets know -- is to fumble badly. But the Hagen Quartett willingly goes with Beethoven's music down into the profoundest depths of humanity in the Adagio, ma non troppo e molto cantabile of Opus 127 and up into the celestial heights of spirituality of the "Heiliger Dankgesang" of Opus 132. And they do it by being entirely themselves. The clarity of intelligence, the lucidity of ensemble, the transparency of sonority, and, finally, the intensity of expression are what make these performances so wholly and uniquely the work of the Hagen Quartett. These are surely the best recordings of the works since the Alban Berg Quartet's second recordings and among the very best recordings of the work ever made, standing alongside those of the the Berg, the Végh, and the Italiano. Deutsche Grammophon's sound is vivid and translucent.