To say that Miklós Rózsa was an amazing composer of film scores is damning him with faint praise. But after all he did compose the music to Ben Hur, Spellbound, and Madame Bovary (with a ball scene containing brilliantly scored complex cinematic crossfades that would have baffled Elliot Carter or Michael Tippett). While he was leading the life Hollywood affords its celebrities, Rózsa composed “serious” music in secret. In his autobiography he wrote, “My ‘public’ career as a composer for films ran alongside my ‘private’ development as a composer for myself.” His hope was to “. . . prevent their meeting.” Alas, this disc proves that he could not prevent it: even when he wrote chamber music, he was always a film composer.
The pieces on this disc show the Hungarian side of Rózsa, and his almost-envious admiration of Bartók drips from every bar of this music, which is skillful (too much so) but only sparingly effective. Placing these two string quartets back to back shows how purely formulaic they are. The use of the ghostly high harmonics to close the second movement of the First quartet is downright eerie, and strikingly original–that is, until he uses it to close the third movement of the Second quartet. These works rely on old and borrowed notions of how a “well-wrought” string quartet ought to work combined with an attempt at Bartók’s angularity. But without originality they become craft-for-craft’s-sake, which works well for film (where the score has a very different purpose), but not for the intimate focus of chamber music.
The exception that proves this is the beautiful Sonata for two violins, which sounds more rich and full than the two quartets (thanks as much to the recording’s excellent engineering as to the composer’s virtuosic scoring). When Rózsa allows himself to do what he is good at, like write a beautiful melody, the music is charming and inspired.
The Flesch Quartet plays valiantly, never for a second admitting to the flaws in the pieces–here is an example of how excellent performances can make the poor quality of a work even more apparent. You almost feel for the players as they struggle to make music where there is little. The way they imbue the Allegro con brio movement of the Second String Quartet with sinister textures and a relentless and tense rhythmic drive–even in the slower passages–is a testament to their musicianship, but will do little to aid them on their mission to rescue these pieces from their previous obscurity. If you are a fan of Rózsa (as I am) I suggest you skip this disc and watch Spellbound or El Cid. Rózsa really was a marvel of an artist, but not everyone can be Bartók.
