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In the Forum: Musical Discussions
In the Thread: Ravel's String Quartet; Remarkable!
Post Subject: Cleveland vs. Juilliard: La Tache vs. DRC?Posted by Paul S on: 6/27/2009
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I managed to get a hold of a decent demo copy of RCA LSC-2413 (stereo), which features the 1960 iteration of the Juilliard Quartet playing the perennially-conjoined Ravel and Debussy String Quartets.  Despite the Juilliard's reputation of fast play, i would not cite this as the major difference between the performances.  Rather, I would note what I will at first call simply "texture" as the major difference.

The Cleveland group makes fuller use of two elements that the Juilliard plays down (or does not play up), namely bass and "division".  While Juilliard's Robert Mann (1st violin) plays the most consistent lines through their performances, cellist Claus Adam is barely perceptible at times.  In stark contrast, Cleveland's Paul Katz uses his very deep and raspy cello to great advantage to skitter around down there while the ensemble plays "Who's got the button?" with the lines, and the entire Cleveland ensemble is pitched considerably lower; in fact, unusually so.

Likewise with dynamics.  Juilliard is more subtle.  Their longer strokes do not exactly float, but they do tend to "envelop" the texture more than the Cleveland, who are downright brash at times, although never "out of control" or in over their heads.  And it is the same with the plucked sections.

All in all, I like very much both versions, but I would have to give a strong nod to the instruments used by the Cleveland, which I just found out were Paganini's own Stradivari, on loan from the Corcoran Gallery.  And actually, this winds up explaining a lot, I think.

Back to a greenhorn remark I made a couple of posts up the thread, "Where did the young Ravel get this stuff?".  Well, just maybe he got it from Debusy, whose string quartet preceded Ravel's by 10 years.  The simpler melodic/rhythmic structure and "fuzzier" tableau of Debussy's work is perhaps less "distinctive" today.  But it certainly better illustrates the evolution of the "genre", and it very certainly sheds a good deal of light on Ravel's similar work.

Paul S

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