“The times are a little tricky right now,” said Geraldine Walther, violist for The Takács Quartet. “In Beethoven’s day, as Napoleon’s army marched through Vienna, times were a little tricky, too. People are thirsty for something to hang on to.”

And that means there’s a real need for Beethoven’s string quartets.

“It’s very troubled music and very tragic, and somehow Beethoven makes a transformation and comes out of the darkness into the light, and we all go there with him and come out again,” said Walther.

“I feel we can center ourselves in art, and especially in this very profound music of another world,” she added. “There’s something about Beethoven. He’s able to convey what it means to be a human being in an all-embracing way everyone can identify with. And we as performers get to experience that first-hand with the audiences. It’s really been a great experience to play the quartets, and to play them now. Everywhere we’ve gone -- London or Berkley, Princeton or Ann Arbor, everyone is thirsty for this.”

Walther, who joined the quartet in 2005, had been performing in orchestras for 31 years, 29 of them as principal violist of the San Francisco Symphony. When she had the opportunity to audition for the quartet, she jumped at it.

“The members of the quartet have a real talent for coming up with interesting programs,” she said, explaining that playing the same piece from one performance to another is exciting, too. The quartet might play a piece many times, then get a new idea and rework it. Different audiences and different halls have an impact also. The pieces themselves inspire new interpretations. More than that, perhaps, the ensemble members are willing to take risks. “If somebody has a new idea, we try it. We try to make it new each time we play,” said Walther. “We definitely spur each other on to achieve that. I never feel it’s the same old thing.”

That originality hasn’t gone unnoticed. The New York Times applauded the quartet for “revealing the familiar as unfamiliar, making the most traditional of works feel radical once more.” The Financial Times said “these players show no fear, injecting the music with a heady sense of freedom. At the same time, though, there is an uncompromising attention to detail: neither a note nor a bow-hair is out of place.” And in The New Yorker, Alex Ross wrote that the Takács performances of the Beethoven string quartets “stands as the most richly expressive modern account of this titanic cycle.”

It’s no wonder the quartet has been recognized with awards throughout the world, including three Gramophones, a Grammy, three Japanese Record Academy Awards, Disc of the Year at the inaugural BBC Music Magazine Awards, and Ensemble Album of the Year at the Classical Brits.

Steven Whiting, a U-M professor of musicology, has been listening to the Takács Quartet since the late 1980s. He recalled hearing Gabor Takács-Nagy, one of the founders, play first violin, as well as the concerts the University Musical Society brought here in October 2016 and January 2017 for the initial concerts of the Beethoven Quartet cycle, which are considered some of his greatest compositions. He has been delighted with every incarnation of the ensemble from then until now. “First off, it’s a very brainy group of four intellectuals who think very hard about structure, expression, and history of the music,” said Whiting. Over the years, the personnel has changed, but it always has been, he said, “a living breathing organism, something like a four-way marriage.”

Whiting notes that chamber groups usually perform three Beethoven quartets in a concert, selecting one from the early, middle, and late period each time. The Takács Quartet has been doing that, too, and on Saturday, March 25, at Rackham Auditorium will offer Quartet No. 6 in B-flat Major, Op. 18, No. 6; Quartet No. 16 in F Major, Op. 135; and Quartet No. 9 in C Major, Op. 59, No. 3.

But the final program here, on Sunday, March 26, will include just two, Quartet No. 7 in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1 and Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Major, Op. 130 with Op. 133 “Grosse Fuge.” These are two of the longest.

The original finale of the 130, which we will hear, shocked early audiences. In a TEDx talk, first violinist Edward Dusinberre said that even the musicians objected. One violinist told Beethoven it wasn’t music, and a cellist threw down the score and stamped on it. “Audiences felt they were being taken on a journey whose destination was unknown,” Dusinberre explained, adding that an abrupt arrival -- the ending of the piece -- shocked and confused them at first.

Beethoven responded by writing a new finale just before his death in 1827 and published the original as a separate opus (133). Walther says the 133 is “a real meal in itself,” and “a magnificent piece if you put it on the end of that beautiful quartet.”

Whiting, who will give a pre-performance talk on Saturday, March 25 at 7:00 pm in the Michigan League, points out that most ensembles perform the quartet with both endings. “I like the way the Takács approaches this whole problem,” says Whiting, explaining that the group performed the shorter, later version in an earlier Ann Arbor concert and now will repeat the 130, this time ending only with the "Grosse Fuge."

The Takács Quartet, now in its 42nd season, travels the globe, performing over 80 concerts a year, yet Dusinberre found time to write a book, Beethoven for a Later Age: The Journey of a String Quartet, that takes the reader inside the life of this string quartet and explores the circumstances surrounding the composition of Beethoven’s quartets.

In addition to Dusinberre and Walther, the ensemble includes second violinist Károly Schranz and cellist András Fejér, who was one of the founding members of the quartet.

They're all comfortable performing music in troubled times and following Beethoven's light out of the darkness.

Davi Napoleon is a freelance journalist and theater historian; her book, Chelsea on the Edge: The Adventures of American Theatre, explores the onstage triumphs and offstage turmoil of a theater dealing with cuts to arts funding.

Performances, each with its own program, are on Saturday, March 25 at 8:00 pm and Sunday, March 26 at 4:00 pm at Rackham Auditorium, 915 E. Washington St., Ann Arbor. Visit ums.org for tickets and more details.