Two recordings of The Art of Fugue: Delmé and Collegium Aureum

Two recordings of The Art of Fugue: Delmé and Collegium Aureum

I often think that The Art of Fugue sounds best when played by a string quartet: the sound is beautiful, expressive, there is the possibility of fashioning every voice at will.
And yet, most of the recordings I know are not very thrilling. Even if we put the Emerson and Julliard Quartets aside – as their playing is evidently inspired by the theory that ‘staccato makes polyphony clearer’ which I am absolutely convinced is wrong, the Keller is good but not nearly as convincing as the organ versions (Walcha is sublime in this repertoire) or almost all the good harpsichord versions (Moroney, Gilbert, Guillot, Dirksen to name a few – I do not mention Leonhardt because I think – I know this will come as heretical – he is too expressive and that the result is overdone).

I suspect string quartet versions fail because most string quartets are too specialized in classical and romantic repertoires and cannot do justice to the regular voice flow of a full blown fugue; it almost seems the musicians are not really convinced by the beauty of what they are playing. And yet, Munchinger managed, instead of his romanticism, to be quite convincing. A mystery unsolved for me.

In the recent months I have been listening to two versions by string quartets. One of them is hardly by a string quartet: the rather old (but very well recorded) Collegium Aureum version. The other, the Delmé Quartet version.
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I will begin will the later, Delmé’s. I can only say that either I don’t understand it or that the transposition by a fourth (it is transposed up to g minor for reasons of feasibility) robs the piece of something.

The playing itself is rather good, and every musician integrates well into the ensemble. But there is a kind of lack of gravity which stems both from the transposition and the extreme flow of playing that I think does not accord with the piece. Also, the quartet seems to have been recorded from too far, therefore achieving a stupendous blend of sound but not the possibility of close listening to every voice.

Being totally blunt, this version is too ‘classical’, almost Mozartean, and I would go as far as to say that the result sounds flippant to me.

I would not bring the following up if I did not find, even before reading the performing notes, that there was an element of flippancy. But Robert Simpson greatly irritated me by stating that he hopes his version will give the string quartets ‘short pieces with which to open concerts’: whatever one may think of The Art of Fugue it certainly is no musical canapé to wheat the appetite for something more solid.

So, for me, the Delmé version has almost everything to be a good candidate for a gift to someone I do not really like. I will keep it just because if features Tovey’s ending to the last counterpoint which I did not know before. It seems well written, although the ending is a trifle too flourished to my taste and seems a bit Technicolor in the concentrated and introvert world of The Art of Fugue.

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The Collegium Aureum version is completely different. To start with, it is not quite a ‘quartet version’ because there are interventions of the double bass (violone). The voice leaders are the violin, the viola, the tenor viola and the cello (doubled by the double bass in certain movements). This distribution gives extreme clarity to every voice (the tenor viola is superb) and there is no preponderance of the treble (as with Goebel’s rather odd version): every voice is clear, you can perfectly well follow each thread of the music and yet it fully integrates into a beautiful harmony.

I quite like the extreme intensity of playing. The Collegium Aureum has always been unfavorably compared to the Concentus Musicus but I personally always thought it was a much better musical ensemble. I have read that the Collegium Aureum was ‘uninspiring’, ‘flat’ (not out of tune, just boring) and lots of such niceties. But you will definitely not find this recording boring. The playing is passionate – every musician seems deeply committed to what he is playing, and there is evenpowerful crescendi in certain fugue ends; each instrument vibrates powerfully and creates a very intense overall effect (To my readers that do not know me well, please bear in mind that I am definitely not against the kind of emotion that 1950-60 musicians used to put into their music making. If anything, I am partial to it: that is why I like Lautenbacher and even Karl Richter.)

The negative point is that the harpsichords used in the four voiced versions of the three-part mirror fugues and – this is the real alas! – the canons, are rather ugly.

I liked this version immensely. I would like similar versions of the Well Tempered Clavier were frequent.
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For formal balance, let me conclude by a reference of the discussion with which I began this text: I fully confirm that I do not like ‘String Quartet’ versions, but that has, I think, nothing to do with the sonority or the possibilities of a string quartet. It has do to with the fact that usual string quartets are really not used to The Art of Fugue and that it seems that the work is really not in their hearts.