Sirius Quartet Evans String Quartet No 1

Death preyed heavily on the minds of both Schubert and Sibelius when they were composing the two string quartets on this new recording from the Ehnes Quartet. Sibelius had undergone several operations to remove a tumour in his throat. The bleak and highly personal 4th Symphony is the masterwork from this period, but the string quartet ‘Intimate Voices’ of 1908 should not be underestimated. Taut and highly concentrated, it has an almost Haydnesque construction, and the quartet’s first movement’s sheer perfection of form approaches that of the 3rd Symphony’s opening movement.

What an outstanding release! Pavel Haas was one of the many Czech/Jewish composers interned by the Nazis at the Terezin concentration camp before being sent to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. His three string quartets are extraordinary pieces, continuing the line of development inaugurated by Janácek both in their exploration of unusual sonorities and in their use of folk and popular music for much of their melodic substance. The Quartets Nos. 2 and 3 previously were recorded by the Hawthorne Quartet as part of Decca’s Entartete Musik (Degenerate Music) series dedicated to works suppressed by the Nazi regime, but these performances are superior in every way.

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.

If this premiere recording of Stephen Hough’s String Quartet No 1 may be regarded as definitive—the work is dedicated to the Takács Quartet—those of the quartets by Ravel and Dutilleux are no less distinguished.

This is a brilliant idea for a CD. Composed within a time-frame of 11 years (1917-28), at a similar geographical distance from the main cosmopolitan centres of music, and with similar stylistic overlaps between late Romanticism and modernism, these two pairs of quartets make for genuinely illuminating comparison.