Melos

This is a reissue CD set of the 15 Schubert Quartets by the Weiner (Vienna) Konzerthaus Quartet. This 6 CD set was issued by Universal Music France in 1998. The 20-bit remastering from the original master tapes is excellent. Although these hard to find monaural Westminster label recordings date from 1950 to 1953, the sound is full and warm. The playing and performances are superb. The CD booklet notes in French and English leave something to desire. However, this CD set is worth getting your hands on while it's still available!

When he wrote his second String Quintet, op.111, in 1890, Brahms thought, strangely enough, that it would be his artistic testament, to be followed by "some glorious farniente, a little time between life and death". But this serene work, which disconcerted the composer's friends by its complexity and by the importance it gives to the viola, was to be succeeded by another quintet, this time with clarinet, which was inspired by Brahms's fascination with the playing of the clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld. The supreme masterpiece among his chamber works featuring the clarinet, this sublime opus 115 is undoubtedly one of the composer's most popular works.

It may seem an unlikely thing to say about a German chamber ensemble, yet the Melos Quartet of Stuttgart are more suave, more feline, than the Quartetto Italiano in the opening movement of Mozart's E flat Quartet. The former have, too, the advantage of a modern recording with a more exact stereo placing of each instrument, whereas the Philips disc is close on ten years old.

Bruckner's only major chamber work is given an enthusiastic reading by the Melos Quartet with the addition of Enrique Santiago on the extra viola part. The Quintet was written in 1879, during a tumultuous period in Bruckner's compositional career when he had just finished the final version of the Fifth Symphony, was about to produce the final version of the finale of the Fourth Symphony, and had just begun work on the Sixth Symphony. Most of the Quintet "sounds" like Bruckner, but there are several unusual features, and the fourth movement is one of the composer's finest.

Open-minded listeners looking for unfamiliar string quartets by a master composer of the same period as Beethoven and Schubert will likely be delighted by the six quartets of Luigi Cherubini. Written mostly between 1829 and 1837, the Italian-French composer's quartets are in the standard forms in the usual four movements. He fills those forms with entirely new content, which, if not as vigorously argued as Beethoven's nor as gloriously lyrical as Schubert's, is nevertheless elegantly expressive, consummately dramatic, and often utterly unexpected. Cherubini's quartets have received occasional recordings, but none have matched this set from Germany's Melos Quartet.

On Trash Generator, the Sacramento trio Tera Melos builds on its prodigious mix of post-hardcore and prog, reining-in the chops in service of catchy, harmonically rich songs.

Apart from the Takacs Quartet, whose spirited, youthful account for Hungaroton/Conifer (4/88) of Schumann's three quartets was marred by inferior recorded sound, no single group has as yet given us either a complete Schumann or Brahms quartet cycle on CD—and certainly not a composite set of all six works. So all gratitude to the Melos Quartet for filling the gap. Their playing is immediately enjoyable for its warmth, its rhythmic impulse and its very positive directness. To try and place it in sharper perspective I've nevertheless taken the liberty of comparing the two discs with my cherished old LP set of the same works from the Quartetto Italiano (Philips—nla). For even though this has recently been deleted, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find it back in the shops, digitally remastered, before too long.

This well re-mastered disc is a generous compilation of two former LPs. The Hummel, recorded in 1965, was originally one LP and the Weber, recorded in 1959, was the other. The two Hummel works were written in 1812 (Quintet) and 1816 (Septet) and the Weber quintet was completed in 1815 having been started some four years earlier in 1811. Hummel and Weber both belong to the generation of composers who started in service and, during their lives, made the transition to becoming independent freelance musicians. Hummel was much admired as a virtuoso pianist and most of his works feature the piano in some form or another.

Both quartets on this disc are by composers who were not known for their chamber music, and in the case of Verdi, the E minor quartet stands completely outside his usual mode of composition. The Sibelius quartet, while it veers far from the well worn path of late-romantic chamber music, lies comfortably within its composer's milieu, with its angular harmonies, stark melodies, and overall enigmatic mood.