Sirius Quartet Evans String Quartet No 1

Bela Bartok's six quartets are considered the most important cycle of works in the genre after those of Beethoven. Like Beethoven, the form of the quartet spanned Bartok's creative life.

Béla Bartók - Alban Berg Quartett - String Quartets 1-6
2xCD | EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 647 MB | Full Artwork: 62 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: EMI # 0946 3 60947 2 4 | Country/Year: Europe 2006, 1987
Genre: Classical | Style: Early 20th Century

“The Alban Berg bring all their usual sophistication and Viennese hothouse climate to works which are sometimes illuminated by them, and equally often obscured.” ~BBC Music Magazine

Impressive and ultimately accessible 20th Century quartets by Welsh composer Daniel Jones (1912-1993) performed with absolute grip and certainty by the Delme ensemble. What is most remarkable in Jones is the wide dispersion of his musical intellect. The seemingly natural variety of his compositional thinking and the depth of his concentration are staggering. And perhaps this is the best way to describe these eight works: complex "concentrations." While not paralleling contemporary downlanders like Bax, Bridge or Simpson, yet venturing much further than the prototypes of Prokofiev, Shostakovich or Bartok, but eschewing ………..

The original Borodin Quartet was founded in 1945 in the Soviet Union and this release marks the Quartet’s 70th anniversary. They enjoyed a close relationship with Shostakovich, and often worked with him as a new quartet was written (and they also recorded the cycle).

Noted as an influence on Grainger, Vaughan Williams, and other contemporaries, Cyril Scott was possibly the most experimental of English composers in the early twentieth century. His chromatically ambiguous and highly atmospheric music was considered daring for its time, but today it seems no harder to grasp than, say, late Strauss or early Bartók. Indeed, Scott's String Quartet No. 1 may remind the listener of Bartók's first quartet, for both composers shared an uncanny affinity for enharmonically modulating counterpoint, elegiac ……

Blair Sanderson @ Allmusic.com

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s six ‘Milanese’ quartets constitute a milestone in his artistic activity. Written between Bolzano and Milan between 1772 and 1773, they came a few years after the Quartet K80/73f that he had composed in Lodi during his first Italian visit. More than that work, these six pieces – conceived before Mozart left the Milanese public with his third and last work for the Lombard capital, Lucio Silla K135 – constitute one of the first organic sets of string quartets ever conceived. Though based on the model of Haydn, they reveal Mozart’s modern spirit, capable of following a new path and enriching it with his own personal contribution. Thirty years after the first and only recording of these works on period instruments by the Festetics Quartet, here is the recording debut of a young Italian ensemble, with the bonus of the first ever historically informed recording of the Quartet K156’s original second movement.