Ayako Hosokawa With The Masaru Imada Quartet – No Tears

The Legendary Amadeus Quartet - Recordings 1951-1957: Haydn, Schubert, Brahms (2009) [7CD Box Set] {Brilliant Classics}
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© 2009 Deutsche Grammophon / Brilliant Classics | 93807
Classical / Romantic / Chamber Music / String Quartet

Formed by three Austrian immigrants and one youthful Londoner, the Amadeus Quartet came to prominence in postwar England. It excelled in the Classical repertoire, and its recordings in the 1950s were important contributions to the growing body of chamber music on the newly introduced LP. The process of recording on tape was a major improvement over the start-and-stop 78 rpm methods, and these clean and skillfully edited masters hold up quite well in the digital transfer. This seven-disc set follows Deutsche Grammophon's 2003 reissue of the quartet's early Mozart recordings, and covers works by Haydn, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Brahms, thus giving a fuller representation of the group's prodigious output for Westminster and DG.

One of the truly iconic works in the repertoire for string quartet, Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden is named after the song which has lent its theme to the second movement. At the end of Matthias Claudius’s poem, which Schubert had set as a 20-year-old in 1817, Death cradles the Maiden in his bony embrace. And her fear, in the first verse, of encountering his tomb-cold touch is mirrored by his desire for her in the second. In Schubert’s life time, death was a constant presence in everyday life and even a young person like himself would have encountered it at close quarters – in fact, his own mother had passed away when he was only 15.

Ragazze Quartet perform works by two female composers Rhiannon Giddens (*1977) and Florence Price (1887-1953), combined with the ‘American’ String Quartet No.12 by Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904). Florence Price was the first African-American woman to be recognized for her symphonies, yet her music was forgotten for many years. Her String Quartet No.2 is a mix of European romanticism, her ‘Southern’ roots, the emerging blues and African-American spirituals. The title of the album derives from a song Rhiannon Giddens wrote after seeing a 19th-century advertisement for a 22-year-old female slave whose 9-month-old baby was also for sale, but 'at the purchaser’s option'.

The Modern Jazz Quartet - The Complete Modern Jazz Quartet Prestige & Pablo Recordings (2003) {4CD Set}
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© 50s, 80s, 2003 Fantasy / Prestige / Pablo | 4PRCD 4438-2
Jazz / Third Stream / Bop / Cool

In typical Fantasy Records aplomb, this four-CD set collects the eight albums which the Modern Jazz Quartet either mentored or collaborated on during their tenure at the commencement and nadir of their reign as jazz's premier chamber ensemble. Beginning with the 1952 issue of Modern Jazz Quartet/Milt Jackson Quintet recording (the earlier Milt Jackson Quartet sides are not here for obvious reasons, as the band did not commence its fully developed form on them) featuring original drummer Kenny Clarke before Connie Kay replaced him, and ending with This One's For Basie in 1985; the association the MJQ had with Prestige was a monumental one.

A prestigious project: the recording of the complete string quartets of Franz Schubert, by the German Diogenes Quartet. Volume 1 offers one masterpiece, the famous Rosamunde Quartet in A minor, and the early quartet in D major D94. Schubert’s String Quartets count among the most frequently performed quartets of the repertoire (only rivalled by Beethoven). These works express Schubert’s superb gift as a melodist within the classical structure of a string quartet, unique creations of romantic content and classical form.