Schumann’s String Quartets have been waiting for a talented young group to bring a fresh voice to the few familiar ones already in the catalog. The Eroica Quartet isn’t exactly young anymore (the group started in 1993), but it certainly brings a new perspective to these works. The Melos on DG (in a two-disc box with the Brahms Quartets) and the Quartetto Itialiano on Philips have been the benchmarks for years, but this recording definitely can be placed alongside them. The players of Eroica are period performance enthusiasts, and their clear, vibrant sound certainly revitalizes the music–which represents a burst of creative energy from Schumann. He wrote these pieces within weeks of his beloved Clara’s return from a long tour, and his joy (and the mental stability she provided him) is evident throughout.
There is no lack of inventiveness in these scores, and they are not nearly as confusingly bi-polar as some of Schumann’s later works. The haunting opening of the Op. 41/1 immediately prepares us for the group’s liberal (and appropriate) use of portamento throughout the disc. True, both the Melos and Quartetto Italiano do this in some spots as well, but the different timbre of the Eroica’s instruments, vividly recorded by Harmonia Mundi, amounts to practically a new aesthetic concept. The First Quartet’s nicely shaped melodic lines (especially in the presto Scherzo) sound slightly richer on the period strings, and there are subtleties at the ends of phrases in the gentle middle section of that movement that are largely ignored in other performances. These players also are appropriately excited and jubilant in the development section of the first movement of the No. 2 Quartet, and wherever else Schumann’s high spirits make themselves evident.
The blend of the instruments, aided by matching bowstrokes and selective vibrato, at times is reminiscent of a harmonium (this is a good thing), an effect most notable in the No. 2 Andante’s second variation. The quartet “sighs” wonderfully into the tricky rhythms of the quasi-scherzo second movement of Op. 41/3, and avoids false accents in the difficult-to-phrase main theme of the same work’s finale. In short, the players scarcely make a misstep anywhere. This is the recording to have, and anyone still harboring fears regarding period string sound, or who has doubts about Schumann’s expertise at this most demanding of instrumental media, will be cured of such notions after a full dose of this remarkable disc.
