Amaryllis Quartett Japanische Landschaften

Schnittke's Piano Quintet, a creative response to his mother's death, is an austere, haunting work full of grief and tenderness that marks one of his early ventures into polystylistic writing. The opening piano solo is unique, a spare statement of puzzlement in the face of tragedy. It gives way to a waltz, as if recapturing a lost past, then the graceful dance melody literally disintegrates as the strings venture off into other regions, vainly trying to reassemble the theme and failing. At the end of its touching five movements the music's despair is transformed into serene, hard-won acceptance. Shostakovitch's 15th Quartet, his final statement in that form, premiered just months before his death. It's six slow movements are shot through with contemplative sadness and regret. The music is so rich in texture and substance that attention never flags.

Walter Gropius is regarded as a revolutionary visionary who founded the Bauhaus style in the 1920s. His work is characterised by clarity and boldness. In common with the musicians of the Gropius Quartett, Weimar and Berlin were to become the centres of his creative work. Following Gropius' example, and influenced by personal encounters with Yehudi Menuhin and Mstislav Rostropovich, the Gropius Quartett has set itself the goal of crystallising the clear structure of the composition and bringing it to life through their own passionate playing style. The members of the Gropius Quartett have known one another since studying together at the International Menuhin Music Academy in Gstaad and at the Juilliard School in New York.

The first two of the three string quartets of Mendelssohn's Op. 44 were recorded by the Cherubini Quartett in 1990. With its transparent textures, elegant phrasing, and refined execution, the ensemble is temperamentally suited to this music, which seems to require those qualities above others. While Mendelssohn acquired many advanced compositional techniques from studying Beethoven's quartets, he never presumed to plumb the master's spiritual depths, and preferred instead to emulate the Classical gentility and poise of Haydn and Mozart. The String Quartet No. 3 in D major, Op. 44/1, is predominantly exuberant and optimistic, and the Cherubini Quartett delivers it in a light, effervescent style, and only occasionally touches on the deeper passions that Mendelssohn prized in this work. More serious and fervid in expression, the String Quartet No. 4 in E minor, Op. 44/2, evokes the tense emotions of eighteenth century Sturm und Drang. The Cherubini Quartett renders the work with a darker coloration and richer tone, but these shadings neither interfere with the clarity of the parts nor weigh down Mendelssohn's fleet lines.

The Boreas Quartett Bremen and soprano Dorothee Mields bring a little-known musical manuscript of the renaissance to life and present a series of premiere recordings. The Basevi Codex, a collection of Franco-Flemish chansons, motets and mass settings, was produced during the early sixteenth century in the famous music scribing workshop of Pierre Alamire. Faithfully following renaissance performance practice, which allowed great freedom in its musical realisations, the recorder consort and Dorothee Mields interpret selected pieces from the codex, with voice or purely instrumental, and, depending on the character of the piece, also with improvised virtuoso ornamentation. This creates a colourful picture of the music as it was sung and played at the Burgundian-Dutch court of Princess Margaret of Austria in Mechelen.

The four chamber works by Austrian Thomas Larcher recorded here show that's he's a composer to watch out for. His compositional voice is strikingly unencumbered by adherence to any orthodoxy, and his work is direct in its emotional and intellectual communication. My Illness Is the Medicine I Need, for soprano, violin, cello, and piano, is particularly effective; its aphoristic texts come from a Benetton "Colors" magazine that included photographs of psychiatric hospitals and quotations from their patients. Larcher's understated text setting allows the voices of the patients to be heard with unaffected bleakness and it is strongly moving. Even though it uses a contemporary harmonic language, the string quartet Ixxu (1998-2004) is old-fashioned in its emotional clarity. Its last movement, "ruhig," is genuinely peaceful and brings to mind the serenity of Arvo Pärt's Fratres. His 1990 quartet Cold Farmer is similarly direct and generous in inviting the listener in, and here again the slow movement is especially deeply felt and engaging.

Finally, a Shostakovich CD by the Asasello-Quartett! The internationally successful and award-winning ensemble has long been intensively engaged with the 15 works of the great Russian composer and is now embarking on a complete recording. The new GENUIN release of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Quartets Nos. 7 - 13 now kicks off the series. According to the booklet for the production, “Love, death and dearest people – these are the themes of the works heard on this double CD.” And the Asasello-Quartett spans the breadth of interpretation just as broadly as the variety of themes outlined here: with poignancy, elegance, and virtuosity – a whole world of its own!