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Fire and Deslotation from the Takács Quartet New York
Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall
10/16/2026 -
Felix Mendelssohn: String Quartet in F minor, Op. 80
Carlos Simon: The Warmth of Other Suns
César Franck: Piano Quintet in F Minor
Jeremy Denk (Piano), Takács Quartet: Edward Dusinberre, Harumi Rhodes (Violins), Richard O’Neill (Viola), Mihai Marica (Cello) 
Takács Quartet (© Amanda Tipton)
“If the sight of my handwriting checks your tears, put the letter away for we have nothing left now but to weep from our inmost hearts.”
Felix Mendelssohn, to his late sister’s husband.
“Sometimes you wish you could go back and ask your teachers again to guide you; but up there onstage, exactly where they always wanted you to be, you must simply find your way. They have given all the help they can; the only person who can solve the labyrinth of yourself is you.”
Jeremy Denk
One marriage in musical heaven is rare. Two are rarefied. Last night the Takács Quartet gave us a pair of miracles. And they almost re‑defined the word marriage.
The first was their union with Jeremy Denk. As a soloist, Mr. Denk is one of the most illuminating on the concert stage. As a partner, especially a partner with Takács, his is not so much a chemical as a quantum blending.
(Incidentally, should the Iran’s Sharia or our own ICE monsters decide to ban pianos, Denk and Stephen Hough would shrug their shoulders. Their writing keys are as illuminating as their piano fingers.)
The second marriage is the “new” Takács, with the Romanian-born cellist Mihai Marica replacing András Fejér, the last of the “original” quartet. I don’t have the experience to tell the difference. But I can say that the Takács is still one of the most exciting, blistering and sensitive chamber groups on the stage today.
And that was obvious last night with the first measures of Felix Mendelssohn’s penultimate Sixth Quartet. The piece is an obsequy for the death of his sister–but could have been an ode for himself, since the composer died a few months after this work.
It is a work of despondency, yes. Yet this is not Tchaikovsky’s masturbatory gloom. The way the Takács played, this was pure agitation, it was the whirl of vibrato perplexity at the start, the major-minor cataclysm at the end.
The opening agitated movements had such a concordance of the four instruments that one felt the tempest was internal, a mystical substance that virtually transcended the notes.
And if one needed a typical happy Mendelssohn “fairy-dust” Scherzo, the Takács belied that, showing an emotional depth of jabs and cuts, syncopations and brutality. For the trio, it was time for their new cellist to play darkly, while the upper strings played a ghostly tune.
The Adagio was undisguised mourning, with a sighing by first violin Edward Dusinberre, leading to a finale with words rarely used to describe the young composer: anger and mystery. The Takács went through their paces with rumbling undertones, with demonic triplets (Mr. Dusinberre again) and raw last notes.
One shouldn’t hypothesize about inspiration. But one wonders whether Mendelssohn, had he lived longer than his 36 productive years, would have deepened, turned the feelings of this Quartet into honestly tragic music.
C. Simon/J. Denk (© Kendall Bessent/Michael Wilson)
The 40-year-old Carlo Simon is already in his prime. With Warmth from Other Suns, he had the challenge of transforming Isabel Wilkerson’s novel, about the Great Migration of Black southerners to the north into music.
Nothing is gimmicky about Mr. Simon’s quartet here. Like Mendelssohn’s work, this is about pure emotion. Again, the ending is not a dominant-tonic happiness as music verging on happiness with tremolos of fear.
Mr. Simon’s music–played by the Takács, who had premiered the work–was illustrative, yes. But it was equally a well crafted intriguing three movements standing on their own.
For one who is tired of César Franck’s Symphony and endless Violin Sonata, the Piano Quintet was an emotional revelation. Not simply Jeremy Denk’s energetic playing, but the fierce playing of Takács itself.
Nothing here has the sentiment of those foregoing Franck pieces. Between the ferocious playing of the opening, with a winning excess of vibrato to a slow movement which averts Franck’s sentimental mien, we have a gripping work. The final movement usually balances between allegro non troppo and fuoco–fire. Takács didn’t balance it at all. They swung through the movement undeterred about propriety, and allowed their incandescence continue through the breathless last notes.
Harry Rolnick
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