Alexander Quartet

Following its hugely acclaimed debut on Orchid Classics, the Tesla Quartet returns alongside clarinettist Alexander Fiterstein in works by Mozart, Finzi, John Corigliano and Carolina Heredia.

The Alexander String Quartet launches its 40th season with this recording of Brahms String Quartets — plus Brahms’ Intermezzo (transcribed for string quartet by Zakarias Grafilo). With these complete Brahms Quartets, the ASQ has compiled a veritable Brahms compendium, including Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet (FCL 2021, with Eli Eban) and Piano Quintets (FCL 2014, with Joyce Yang), both named "MusicWeb International Recordings of the Year", as well as his String Quintets and Sextets (FCL 2012), which were hailed as a “life-enhancing set” by The Arts Desk.

Alexander Koryakin, winner of the 2019 Jaén Prize International Piano Competition, has selected two perfectly paired masterpieces for his first Naxos recording. Liszt’s Vallée d’Obermann is inspired by his travels in Switzerland, and is a true symphonic poem for piano. Franck’s Piano Quintet in F minor, which Liszt himself found shockingly intense, is a cyclical work of passionate extremes, and a masterpiece of Franco-Belgian repertoire. Also included are Debussy’s L’Isle joyeuse, which offers crystalline brightness, and Jorge Sastre’s Jaenera ‘Ecos y temple’, with virtuoso expression drawing on a wide range of influences. Alexander Koryakin began playing piano at the age of nine, gave his first recital at the age of ten and at eleven won his first competition. Over the course of his career, Koryakin has given over 500 recitals throughout Russia and Europe, including appearances at the Piano Loop Festival in Croatia and Gegen den Strom Festival in Germany.

The unjustly neglected piano quartet (J76) was completed in September of the year 1809, which the 22-year-old Weber spent in Stuttgart. It was originally offered to the publisher Hans Georg Nägeli, but he rejected it, advising the composer that it created wanton ‘confusion in the arrangement of its ideas’ and indeed too obviously imitated the ‘bizarreries’ of Beethoven. However, the work was issued a year later by the Bonn firm of Beethoven’s friend and admirer Nikolaus Simrock, whose ears were more receptive to the peculiarities of the score than Nägeli.