Takács Quartet

The Beethoven survey that the Takács Quartet are presenting piecemeal in London this season is the group's first complete cycle for five years. Individual Beethoven quartets have featured in their programmes in the interim, of course, but total immersion in this unique musical world demands special preparation, both intellectual and musical. Yet one of the things that is remarkable about the Takács is the way in which their meticulous preparation, the sense that every interpretative and technical challenge has been considered and solved, is always balanced by a feeling of spontaneity and individuality. These players have lived with this music all their professional lives, but still manage to convey its wonders as if discovering it for the first time – whether that is the sheer exuberance of a movement like the finale of the D major quartet, Op 18 No 3, with its teeming figurations; or the way in which the second-movement variations of Op 127 in E flat seem to lift a series of veils, as if coming ever closer to revealing some mysterious secret. The first of this pair of recitals had two more of the Op 18 set, Nos 5 and 4, prefacing the great A minor quartet Op 132, and the care that went into these Haydnesque works was just as detailed as it was for the unfathomable profundities of the late quartet. Every time one hears the Takács, one finds more to wonder at: whole theses could be written on their control of vibrato in the opening chords of Op 127, for instance, or on the way in which they to manage make small details both self-effacing and perfectly characterised at the same time. It's supreme music-making, however you look at it. At St James church, Chipping Campden (01386 849018), 10 May; Guildhall School, London (020-7628 2571), 11 May; Queen Elizabeth Hall (0844 875 0073), 12-13 May.