Minguet Quartet

“This CD with the first four string quartets reflects the interesting path of Rihm’s artistic development. The Minguet Quartet approaches the first two, shorter, works with audibly high concentration without relinquishing, in the frenzy of high-energy playing, their own cultivated sound born from quartet tradition. Here, Rihm’s third quartet, with its not unproblematic subtitle ‘Im Innersten’ (‘at the innermost core’), does not become self-indulgent ….

Klassik Heute, September, 2003

For CPO the Minguet Quartet has now recorded Suk's complete oeuvre for string quartet with Matthias Kirschnereit joining them for the early piano quintet. From this early quintet, a cosmos of the most wonderful chamber music spreads out before us, now finally documented by a young generation of artists.

Wolfgang Rihm’s compositions for string quartet, as extensive as they are varied, share no clear common denominator. Despite all the variety that exists, his string quartets have from the beginning been a constant element in his oeuvre: So far, there are thirteen quartets, as well as ten other compositions for or with a string quartet – a selection of these works can be found on this CD……

The Minguett Quartet recorded nearly the full cycle of Wolfgang Rihm's string quartets for Collegno, and it's a shame these discs are now out of print. The Minguett Quartet are Ulrich Isfort and Annette Reisinger (violins), Aroa Sorin (viola) and Matthias Diener (cello). On this volume of the cycle, we find three quartets from the 1990s and early millennium, a time when Rihm returned to the effusive expressionism that had first made him famous, after a few years of wispy, piannissimo music imitative of Nono and Lachenmann…….

Christopher Culver @ Amazon.com

Nineteenth century Austrian composer Heinrich von Herzogenberg started his career as a lesser Wagner and ended it a lesser Brahms. This CPO disc contains two works from the latter part of his career, his four-movement Piano Quintet in C major and his three-movement String Quartet in F minor, performed by the Minguet Quartett with pianist Oliver Triendl. Both works are superbly composed and deeply felt. Herzogenberg clearly knew exactly how to construct a sonata-form movement, precisely how to write counterpoint, and unerringly how to keep his music moving.

Anájikon, the second ECM album after Music for piano and string quartet (ECM New Series 2309) by Athens-born and Munich-based Konstantia Gourzi, incorporates her chamber and orchestral music of the past decade. The composer also conducts the Lucerne Academy Orchestra here: "I see composing and conducting as a whole, as an inseparable relationship," she says. Gourzi is particularly concerned with making connections between the arts, which also relates to the question of her own artistic identity and the influence of her origins. In Gourzi's sound language, elements of different musical traditions repeatedly merge, and East and West enter into a dialogue. This album presents three of her compositions: her Third String Quartet Anájikon, her orchestral piece Ny-él (commissioned by the Lucerne Festival, in August 2016 with the orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Academy) as well as Hommage à Mozart, three Dialogues.

York Höller was born in Leverkusen and studied from 1963–70 in Cologne with Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Herbert Eimert, and Alfons Kontarsky, among others. His participation in Pierre Boulez’s analysis seminars at the 1965 Darmstadt Summer Courses motivated him to explore serial music. After temporary employment at the Bonn Opera House, he worked in 1971/72 in the West German Radio’s Studio for Electronic Music, whose artistic director he was from 1990 to 2000.