The Yale String Quartet BEETHOVEN: THE LATE STRING QUARTETS, VOL. 2 (Vanguard Classics/Artemis)

The Yale Quartet is the straightest of the straight when it comes to playing late Beethoven. Its interpretations — recorded for the Vanguard label in the late 1960s and early 1970s — aim for unobtrusiveness, trying to present the music simply and without affect. The players don’t linger over cadences or climaxes; everything moves and appears as a whole. At its best, this approach gives the music a sense of naturalness and flow that stands in stark (and welcome) contrast to the awkward, overeager phrasing that characterize recordings like the Emerson Quartet’s. The justly famous recording of the great C-sharp minor quartet, Opus 131, shows this approach off to best effect. Some important musical events might seem to pass by unremarked, but the music accumulates quietly and subtly, and the ending is all the more exalted.

The A-minor quartet, Opus 132, comes off almost as well, with its great slow movement given just a touch of rubato to let it breathe. Only Beethoven’s last quartet, Opus 135, disappoints. Here the music’s humor and wisdom need more character than the Yale offers, and the performance often comes off as brusque. And there’s some shady intonation now and then, especially in the first two works. Still, it’s good to have these works back in the catalogue, thanks to indie giant Artemis’s reissuing of large portions of Vanguard’s pioneering releases.