Music For Strings

Best-known for his refined performances of Baroque and Classical music, Nikolaus Harnoncourt approaches modernism for the first time in this 2004 CD of Béla Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta; Divertimento for String Orchestra. Refinement is still Harnoncourt's watchword in Music, for his reading is extremely polished and precise, but so cautious as to make the work seem insipid. Missing are the edginess of the dissonant counterpoint in the opening movement, percussive bite in the second, agitation in the "night music" of the third, and gusto in the fourth, all necessary to any successful performance.

This keenly anticipated album from Sinfonia of London and John Wilson features two of the greatest British works for string orchestra: Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, and Sir Edward Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro. Elgar’s ground-breaking work, commissioned for the newly formed London Symphony Orchestra and premièred in 1905, is inspired by the baroque concerto grosso, and features a solo string quartet contrasted with the full symphonic string section. These orchestral forces were also adopted by Herbert Howells in his Concerto for String Orchestra, from 1938. Delius’s Late Swallows is the only piece not originally composed for string orchestra; it was arranged (from the slow movement of Delius’s String Quartet) by his amanuensis, Eric Fenby. Recorded in Surround Sound and available as a Hybrid SACD, and digitally in Spatial Audio.

Anton Webern - Chamber Music for Strings
Schoenberg Quartet / Sepp Grotenhuis
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 227 MB | Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Chandos # CHAN 10083 | Country/Year: UK 2003
Genre: Classical | Style: Early 20th Century

"…The whole disc is a great success. Recording quality is first rate, with the necessary clarity tempered by warmth and just the right amount of resonance. Excellent notes are by Dr. Christopher Hailey. Recommended, even if you still find Webern hard work." ~musicweb-international

Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Sz. 106, BB 114 is one of the best-known compositions by the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. Commissioned by Paul Sacher to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the chamber orchestra Basler Kammerorchester, the score is dated September 7, 1936. The work was premiered in Basel, Switzerland, on January 21, 1937 by the chamber orchestra conducted by Sacher, and was published the same year by Universal Edition.