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‘Beethoven for a Later Age: The Journey of a String Quartet’, by Edward Dusinberre - FT.com
January 22, 2016 1:29 pm
‘Beethoven for a Later Age: The Journey of a
String Quartet’, by Edward Dusinberre
Review by Richard Fairman
©Hulton Archive
The Takács Quartet (with Edward Dusinberre far left) performing last year
The title comes from the composer himself. When the first players tried out Beethoven’s Opus 59
string quartets in 1807, their patience quickly wore thin. Frustrated at music he could not
understand, the cellist threw his score on the floor and stamped on it. The first violinist was bold
enough to declare in the composer’s presence that it was “not music” at all. “Oh, they are not for
you,” Beethoven retorted. “They are for a later age.”
He was, of course, right. Beethoven’s 16 string quartets are regarded now as the pinnacle of the
chamber music repertoire and a series of works of extraordinary scope. They can be said to tell
their composer’s life story in microcosm, progressing from his ebullient, truculent youth to the
visionary mastery of his last years. On a wider canvas, they occupy a crucial place in the
development of the string quartet as a genre and bear witness to the changing social and political
background against which they were conceived.
All this is in Edward Dusinberre’s deceptively compact book. But his main theme lies elsewhere: at
the tender age of 25, Dusinberre was hired fresh out of college to take over as first violin of the
Takács Quartet, an international ensemble at the top of its game. It was a tough enough challenge
to follow the widely admired Gábor Takács-Nagy, the quartet’s founding first violinist. Beyond
that, Dusinberre was painfully aware that he was “the awkward schoolboy tolerated by more
sophisticated older brothers” and — perhaps the most tricky aspect to handle — the only
Englishman in a close-knit group of Hungarians. “He’s not nearly passionate enough,” one
audience member was overheard to complain early on. “This new one’s not
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‘Beethoven for a Later Age: The Journey of a String Quartet’, by Edward Dusinberre - FT.com
Hungarian — from England I think.”
The book follows his personal journey, while simultaneously threading through the parallel stories
of Beethoven’s development as a composer, of the string quartet in general, and of early 19thcentury culture and politics. Does all that seem a tall order? The narrative is potentially as complex
as one of Beethoven’s knotty four-part fugues in the late quartets, but 20 years’ experience of
playing chamber music has made Dusinberre adept at handling the interplay of multiple themes.
Self-awareness and a sense of humour play their part. Sleight of hand makes the book entertaining
and easy to digest.
Back in 1993, the invitation to join the august Takács Quartet was not extended lightly. “This is not
a job,” warned one of the other three. “It’s your family, your life.” Periods of months away on
international concert tours mean that any kind of settled social life has to be forgotten. From day
one, the diary involved criss-crossing continents in a dirty white Ford Granada alternating with
long hours of rehearsal sessions, day and night in the company of the same three colleagues.
Every string quartet sets out with the intrinsically contradictory aim of attaining a unanimity of
playing style without losing the four musicians’ individual personalities. Dusinberre says it took
him five years to work out his place within the group. That involved learning to shape opinions
without stifling dissent, knowing how to manage frustration and tiredness in rehearsal, and then
transferring all they had practised into the performance as if it was spontaneous. In the quartets,
more than any of his other works, Beethoven explores his most private feelings. For chamber
music performers this leads to the ultimate challenge of their profession: how to express a
“private grief . . . in a hall to 500 people”.
Goethe, Beethoven’s contemporary and cautious admirer, described the string
quartet as “four rational people conversing with each other”. That makes it all
sound so easy. What this book gives us is a 20-year struggle for perfection, a
story of integration and companionship, of loss and renewal as members of
the quartet die or leave. As they play the “Heiliger Dankgesang”, Beethoven’s
thanks for hoped-for recovery during his last illness, Dusinberre recalls with exhilaration: “We
were taken far out of ourselves, liberated from the confines of individual personalities as we
surrendered to the music.” That, he might have added, was Beethoven’s gift to a later age.
Beethoven for a Later Age: The Journey of a String Quartet, by Edward Dusinberre,
Faber, RRP£18.99, 272 pages
Richard Fairman is an FT music critic
Photograph: Hulton Archive
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