Beethoven String Quartets

In its 2012/13 season, the Hagen Quartett brings the complete Beethoven string quartets to the most prominent musical centres of the world, including New York, Tokyo, Paris, London, Vienna and Salzburg. During the first half of this tour, the quartet went right away from the stage to the studio to record three of their most favourite Beethoven quartets. With Op. 18/3 and Op. 135, the album ranges from the very first to the last string quartet Ludwig van Beethoven wrote.
The Hagen Quartet came into being in 1981, soon achieving success in a number of competitions and signing an exclusive recording contract with DG, which over the course of a 20-year relationship produced 45 CDs.

The Chiaroscuro Quartet has embarked on a chronological, single-album cycle of Beethoven's quartets, and the group returns here with the second volume, offering the fourth, fifth, and sixth quartets from the composer's Op. 18 set of six. The group uses gut strings and early instruments (second violinist Pablo Hernán Benedí plays a 1570 Amati instrument) that impart a physicality fitting the quartet's expressive aims. The word "chiaroscuro" befits this quartet, which, even in Haydn quartets, offers high-contrast performances.

Continuing its fresh, vibrant survey of the Beethoven string quartets, this volume finds the Artemis Quartet visiting the two quartets in the key of B flat major. The first, Op. 18/6, comes from the beginning of Beethoven's career as a composer of quartets, following in the footsteps of Mozart and Haydn while already forging new ground and pushing the envelope of traditional quartet form.

Fresh, vibrant, informed; these are adjectives that continue to apply to the Beethoven string quartet cycle performed by the Artemis Quartett on the Virgin Classics label. Having studied with some of the world's finest ensembles including the LaSalle, Alban Berg, Emerson, and Juilliard quartets Artemis exceeds the sum of its education by not simply mimicking its predecessors, but improving upon them.

The ensemble's latest recording of Mozart string quartets left critics agog: "I doubt that these particular works have ever been recorded with such astonishing command as by the Hagen Quartett. The players' corporate intonation is almost impossibly true . . . A disc whose rare brand of perfectionism is rather special." (CD review by Julian Haylock, The Strad)

Beethoven's second set of quartets, Opus 59, inhabit a very different universe from that of his first set, Opus 18. Although only six years had passed since the publication of the Opus 18 quartets, Beethoven's style changed immensely. The Opus 59 quartets were composed in the wake of the "Eroica" Symphony, and the vastness of the individual movements; the symphonic, orchestral character of the string writing; and the stretched formal boundaries led some critics to dub the first of the set an "Eroica" for string quartet.

The Juilliard String Quartet has distinguished itself as one of the longest-standing quartets in the U.S., responsible for the premieres of countless new works as well as commanding performances of the standard repertoire. Its earliest performances of Beethoven drew a substantial amount of attention for its more aggressive, in-the-string approach that did not treat Beethoven as a delicate flower as some quartets of the day had. These characteristics survived in the quartet even as its membership changed. This Medici Arts DVD samples one quartet from each of Beethoven's three main style periods, performed in 1975 at Polling in Bavaria.

The wisdom of experience and the infirmities of age lie perhaps too heavy on the Borodin Quartet's set of Beethoven's early quartets. There is no denying that the Borodin know exactly what to do with the music. Their balances are exemplary, their tempos are ideal, and their phrasing is supremely expressive. And there is no denying that the Borodin love deeply every note of the music.