I've been interested in Haydn's Seven Last Words ever since being aware that he had set them, with James MacMillan's account being such a big favourite. There are several arrangements by Haydn of this same music and one wouldn't think that the string quartet version would be the enduring one but it has been. My previous encounters with it have not been memorable but this new recording, as recommended by the BBC Music Magazine, is a revelation.
Haydn's classical temper and generally sunny disposition can't make this as austere an experience as MacMillan's late C20th choral setting. It has no words, of course, and doesn't sound as slow throughout as the list of tempi markings suggest it might be, which are all largo, grave, adagio or lento. You would hardly know, without the titles, that these pieces express the same text. And so, one reservation could be that there is not enough suffering in it but I've heard it said that only Haydn could write the Creation and not have the devil in it whereas Mozart certainly would have. He must have been a cheerful soul and a delight to know.
It is, however, a wonderful record and finds in great depth whatever was missing from other recordings I've heard of it, admittedly paying less attention on the radio. Something about the playing and recording- and I'm not qualified to say quite what it is- make this comparable to the Fitzwilliam Quartet's brilliant set of Shostakovich quartets and, there are passages when the plangent, painful last words are more directly suggested that glimpses of Shostakovich, due nearly 200 years later, are noticeable. But the Casals Quartet live up to their ambitious name with some blissful playing here, the limited range of the four strings never being an obstacle to beautifully realized phrasing and making a very expressive hour of some of what turns out to be the finest Haydn.
The rest of their catalogue needs to be investigated, I see they do the Arriaga, too, and what a good idea it was to take the BBC magazine's word on this one. In what is already becoming a competitive heat, this is a candidate for the best disc I buy all year.