It hardly seems like a year has passed since we revealed our Presto Top Ten recordings of 2020, and yet here we are on the cusp of finalising our decision-making for this year's list (stay tuned for the announcement of our Top 100 recordings of 2021 next week …). One of last year's Top Ten was a magnificent account of chamber works by Elgar and Beach from the Takács Quartet, and they have followed this up with an equally mesmerising performance of string quartets by Felix Mendelssohn and his sister, Fanny.
At the centre of the album is Felix's Sixth String Quartet, Op 80 from 1847, his last major work and an entirely appropriate companion piece to Fanny's Quartet, written as an outpouring of grief after her death earlier that year. It's full of drama and rage, and the Takács players lean into this right from the start, with stabbing accents from cello and viola. There is some light to go with the shade, though, with warmth and passion in the third movement Adagio. It's not long before the despair returns, however, and the furious explosion of triplets that concludes the work is expertly done.
No less well served is the much earlier Quartet No 2, Op 13, written when Felix was just eighteen years old. It's a wonderful work that owes a debt to Beethoven, to be sure, and yet is experimental in form and forges its own path. What I enjoyed most about the Takács's performance here is the sense of flexibility that they bring. Perhaps taking their cue from the quasi-operatic, recitative-like passages at the opening of the fourth movement, there's a plasticity to their playing that not only reveals the thinking behind their interpretation but also impresses in the way that it binds the ensemble together. For instance, they might delay a downbeat in order to highlight a sudden change of dynamic, or a player's occasional (but never excessive) use of portamento to slide between notes for expressive effect will then be taken up by another member of the quartet when they come to play the same phrase.
For me, though, I think the highlight has to be their performance of Fanny's sole contribution to the string quartet genre. Seemingly never performed during her lifetime, and with even now only a handful of recordings to its name (maybe not too surprising given that the score and parts only came to light in 1988), it is similar to Felix's Op 13 in its debt to Beethoven but also in its attempts to play with and transcend formal restrictions.
And bold in form it is, eschewing a conventional first movement (which would have been expected to be an Allegro or similar in sonata form with perhaps a slow introduction) and opting for a freer, more rhapsodic Adagio ma non troppo. It almost goes without saying but alongside the Takács Quartet's customarily impeccable ensemble playing are some incredibly arresting individual moments, not least from relative newcomer to the quartet, violist Richard O'Neill, who more than demonstrates why he was picked to join the group last year, with both him and cellist András Fejér fearlessly despatching endless runs of semiquavers in the last movement with gusto and aplomb. The balance between all four players is ideal, with motifs and themes thrown from one player to the next with ease, and there's a vibrancy to the recorded sound that is thrilling in the more dramatic moments whilst also allowing for more introspective intimacy in the quieter passages.
As I mentioned earlier, discussions surrounding our Top Ten for this year are yet to be concluded, and so I can't guarantee that the Takács Quartet will make the official list for the second year running, but for me this album is a definite winner.