Beethoven: Late Quartets - Tokyo String Quartet

This set completes the Tokyo Quartet's Beethoven series for Harmonia Mundi. The group has recorded the cycle before, with a different first violin and cello, for RCA in the 1980s, but the basic characteristics remain the same. The Tokyo Quartet continues to prize beauty of sound and smoothness of articulation above all other musical qualities, and there are few recordings of these works to match the sheer polish and unanimity of ensemble that are on display here. Whether that is what matters most in late Beethoven may be down to personal taste, but to my ears at least the phrasing here is far too manufactured and uniform, the expressiveness applied like toothpaste from a tube. To make the Grosse Fuge (played as the first-choice finale to Op 130, with Beethoven's substitute movement following it) as suave as it sounds here is to deny the essential character of the movement, and elsewhere the Tokyo seem to skate over profundity. They take just six minutes over the Cavatina of Op 130 where other groups take more like eight. The A minor Quartet Op 132 arguably suits their approach best, in a wonderfully rich-textured and supple performance, but compared with the Takács Quartet on Decca, the Tokyo give you only a part of the story elsewhere.