Haste and speed are seldom good, even in music. Just ask the Taurus Quartet. Their latest cd sounds like a convincing ode to this all too often forgotten adage.
In 2022, Concertgebouw Brugge organized the third edition of its arts festival SLOW(36H), an ode to slowness with the motto: the slower the experience, the more intense the memory. In the context of this festival, as we read in the booklet accompanying this new album, the Taurus Quartet was asked to create their own programme, loosely inspired by a 2015 recording by the Keller Quartett, Cantante e tranquillo. The seed planted then has since grown into a recording project built exclusively from slow movements. Not unique, then, but certainly a sustained attempt to pause, just for a moment, almost entirely.
On this train of slowness travels a motley collection of composers. Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827) and György Kurtág (°1926) serve as the main anchor points, but the polyphonists Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377) and Pierre de la Rue (ca. 1450-1518) are also present, as are twentieth-century composers Anton Webern (1883-1945) and Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988). Their music is drawn from its natural habitat and thereby placed in a different light. It is a procedure where there are both gains and losses. One naturally loses the original structure of the string quartet or the composition, but this does not outweigh the interesting recontextualization that takes place. For example, you discover that the Arioso interrotto from Kurtág's Officium breve in memoriam Andrae Szervánsky (opus 28) in all its restraint ultimately has more in common with Machaut's Misa de Notre Dame than one might think. And this despite the many centuries separating both compositions.
Respect and tenderness
Slowness appears in many guises on this album, but perhaps nowhere as convincingly as in the slow movements of Beethoven. These come from the late string quartets – in B flat major (opus 130) and F major (opus 135) – and the second Razumovsky quartet (opus 59 no. 2). For the Taurus Quartet this is no unfamiliar territory: the quartet has several complete performances of these string quartets to its credit. And that is also audible. Soft playing while at the same time remaining clear and incisive in articulation is an art, as we hear, for example, in the Lento assai, cantante e tranquillo from opus 135. The album both begins and ends with this restrained movement. And what strikes the ear even without listening is that such a torturingly slow journey through the musical landscape also causes the musicians to slow down. The result? A performance that lasts a full forty seconds longer than the one we initially heard. The moving Cavatina from opus 130 is, and this in contrast to the tender Molto adagio from the second Razumovsky quartet, drawn out less long than we have become accustomed to with most quartets. The slightly sharper phrasing by the Taurus Quartet makes this famous movement less of a tearjerker and more a hopeful message, and this possibly comes closer to the essence of what Beethoven wanted to express with this extraordinary music.
With SLOW, the Taurus Quartet demonstrates that it is at home in multiple idioms. But above all, that the distance between these disparate voices is smaller than often assumed. The whispering fragility of Kurtág's Microludes – barely audible even – is not far removed from Beethoven's late quartets, which in turn were naturally far ahead of their time. But the unexpected connections between Scelsi's modern compositions and the 5 Sätze for string quartet (opus 5) by Anton Webern are also well worth the discovery. Both are works full of tension and, in the case of Scelsi, with a particularly compelling dynamism. Add to that the transparency evident in the polyphonic compositions of Machaut and Pierre de la Rue and we have a recording that, despite its unambiguous theme and approach, remains engaging from beginning to end. In a society that consciously seeks and even glorifies speed, SLOW can offer a welcome countervoice. Just as on this cd, the key is to use slowness well. Or as French sociologist, anthropologist and philosopher Pierre Sansot put it (in Du bon usage de la lenteur): "La lenteur, c'était, à mes yeux, la tendresse, le respect, la grâce dont les hommes et les éléments sont parfois capables."