Borodin Quartet Tchaikovsky: Quartets Nos.1, 2 (1991)

A slightly curious compilation (two Russian performances dating from 1962, one English from 1976) but an attractive one, and very good value. I had not heard the Gabrieli's Tchaikovsky before, and liked it a great deal: properly chamber-scale, in colour as well as tone of voice, and nice underlining of the lyricism in even Tchaikovsky's most exuberant pages.

French composer Félicien David is a more or less forgotten name today but this fine period-instrument recording by the Cambini-Paris Quartet makes a good case for further exploration of his corpus of works. One or two of David's operas survived for a while in the French repertoire, but he was also more interested in instrumental music than many of his contemporaries. Many areas of his oeuvre lie almost entirely unexplored: his four symphonies, numerous choral works and dozens of songs, for example.

The music of Béla Bartók has everything: the mysterious tension of a thriller, loving lyricism, warm string sounds, almost impossible techniques challenging any string player to rediscover his instrument, and exhilarating rhythms which could well be rooted in folk dance. With the first volume in a complete string quartet cycle, The Ragazze Quartet has declared itself Bartók Bound.

The Hungarians of the Haydn Quartet have the D-Major Quarte will in hand, playing with consistent firm impulse, and realizing full color potential.

Though a pupil of the great orchestrator Rimsky-Korsakov, and in turn a teacher to the likes of Rachmaninov, Glière, and Scriabin, Anton Arensky himself is a composer often forgotten when contemplating the Russian greats. Productive in many genres, it is perhaps in his chamber music that this unduly neglected composer truly shines. His writing has much of the same textural sophistication and melodic beauty as his close friend, Tchaikovsky. In fact, the theme on which the Second Quartet's Variations are based is drawn from a Tchaikovsky quartet. Performing Arensky's First and Second string quartets, along with the Piano Quintet, is the Ying Quartet. This ensemble's playing is characterized by a surprisingly precise, consistent uniformity of sound and exactness of articulation, making it seem as if a single instrument were playing as opposed to four independent parts. All aspects of their technical execution are polished and refined, which only enhances their equally enjoyable musical effusiveness, rich, deep tone, and understanding of Arensky's scores that casts them in the best possible light.

Brett Dean is not shy about revealing what his music is ‘about’. Whether inspired by certain individuals (as in Epitaphs), or by an ecological or human disaster (as in his String Quartet No. 1, on the now all too topical plight of refugees), Dean’s works are usually – perhaps invariably – driven by extra-musical narratives. Rather than tease out any innate structural puzzles or tensions, his music typically falls into short little dramatic narratives – no movement on this disc lasts as long as eight minutes, many of them rather less than five. The most obviously successful work here is Quartet No. 2, ‘And once I played Ophelia’, effectively a dramatic scena. Its soprano soloist is no mere extra voice (as in Schoenberg’s Second Quartet) but the leading protagonist. Allison Bell’s genuinely affecting performance is backed by the Doric Quartet’s expressionist scampering and sustained harmonies, the strings occasionally coming to the fore in the manner of a Schumann-style song postlude.

Admirers of the string quartets of Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, and Maurice Ravel will be happy to discover the refined string quartets of Charles Koechlin, a contemporary of those composers who wrote in a rather similar vein. These attractive chamber works, like the rest of Koechlin's oeuvre, are quite obscure and had been unduly neglected until the Ardeo Quartet chose to record them for its debut CD on Ar Re-Se. The String Quartet No. 1 in D major, Op. 51, is dated 1911-1913, though it appears to have gestated since 1902, and the String Quartet No. 2, Op. 57, was mostly composed between 1911 and 1916, though its sketches show some material going back to 1909; both works therefore partake of musical styles developed between fin de siècle Impressionism and the later innovations of Erik Satie and Les Six, but these works reveal a stronger emphasis on the former. The sweet, placid music that flows in both quartets is balanced by some jaunty, folk-like elements and occasional flirtations with changing time signatures and polytonality, but the calm atmosphere of these quartets is largely undisturbed by the encroachments of modernism.

The Emerson String Quartet makes its PENTATONE debut with a recording of Schumann’s three string quartets. Penned in the summer of 1842 during an exceptional peak of creativity, these quartets formed the beginning of a six-month surge during which most of Schumann’s best chamber music saw the light. Inspired by the example of Beethoven, Schumann’s quartets display a mastery of traditional forms, combined with typically Schumannian fantasy and lyricism, particularly in the inner movements. As such, they underline a new level of maturity in Schumann’s artistic development, surpassing the fantastical aesthetic of previous years.

These performances of Szymanowski's String Quartets and Webern's Langsamer Satz by Carmina Qt are hard to describe with words. The ensemble captures varying shade and light of Szymanowski's magical soundscape by vivid imagination and formidable technical refinement. There is a wondefully crafted performance of Langsamer Satz by Leipziger Qt (MDG), but this one surpasses it by the sheer beauty of tonal blend and the emotional depth and intensity. It doesn't surprise me that this disc received 1992 Gramophone Award in chamber music category and was nominated for Grammy award.

These performances of Szymanowski's String Quartets and Webern's Langsamer Satz by Carmina Qt are hard to describe with words. The ensemble captures varying shade and light of Szymanowski's magical soundscape by vivid imagination and formidable technical refinement. There is a wondefully crafted performance of Langsamer Satz by Leipziger Qt (MDG), but this one surpasses it by the sheer beauty of tonal blend and the emotional depth and intensity. It doesn't surprise me that this disc received 1992 Gramophone Award in chamber music category and was nominated for Grammy award.