#56: Bravery in ‘finding the twist’
Section 7: Antonin Dvořák – String Quartet Op.51, ii: Dumka
Over time, we felt that the Czech Quartet exhibited real bravery in the extent to which they looked for ‘twist’ in the sound. (This was our metaphor for the specific character of their bowing’s ‘search for variation’). This assessment came quite directly from a feeling that our takes often captured the right spirit, in terms of timing and ‘togetherness’, and yet lacked their particular kind of tonal intensity. A good barometer for this was the crescendo b.14-17, where their playing had a kind of tonal elasticity: they increased volume by holding the bow, as if increasing the ‘pressure’ of the sound, until finally allowing it to release into the first violin’s top A.
There are many different ways of getting louder on string instruments, and the distinctions between these are very finely balanced, especially in terms of character. We initially produced the increase in intensity by slightly ‘firming up’ the contact, and using a slow bow speed; but the closer we got to b.16 (beat 4), the more we allowed the bow to release. It is never a matter of a linear, one-dimensional ‘increase’. Generally, these players seemed more likely to grow ‘up the slope’ of the metaphorical hill through more contact, rather than faster bowspeed. They did release into openness on other occasions, but this is associated with less discipline, in rhythm as well as tone, as in the examples from the opening of the Op.96 Vivace. That approach was much more useful to them when aiming to project a gentler character, characterised by much less harmonic tension — or, relatedly, goaldirectedness.
Once again, the sensation of this contact is inseparable from individual and ensemble timing (see #41). We worked hard on integrating this sensitivity, such that we could habitually swing the slurred groups in this passage by giving the first note both a little more time and a slightly firmer ‘core’. Interestingly, we found that this was considerably more difficult to achieve while continuing the legato between groupings, as the Czech Quartet did. We often encountered this capacity for a kind of ‘half-swing’, in which the tone does not break completely at any point in the phrase, but each stroke still has an undulation (that follows the shape of the slur). This was an important ability to develop ‘together’ as an ensemble, but we also needed to remember that in their hands it was never formulaic or reductive. Indeed this aspect of their inflection aptly illustrated the difference between flexible, instinctive conventions, and bluntly unresponsive, ‘applied’ defaults.
