Sirius Quartet Evans String Quartet No 1

The Miró Quartet, celebrating their 30th anniversary this year, presents an album featuring the complete string quartets of Alberto Ginastera, one of the most influential Latin American composers of the 20th century. A master of vivid contrasts and emotional depth, Ginastera infused his music with the spirit of Argentine folk traditions, bold modernist language, and a profound sense of expression. These three quartets span the entirety of his creative development, tracing a fascinating journey across three distinct stylistic periods.

Quatuor Ébène are celebrating Beethoven's 250th Birthday with performances of his string quartets in 18 countries spanning all six continents, and assembling the complete cycle for ERATO from seven stops on this world tour. 2020 is also the 20th anniversary of Quatuor Ébène.

Brahms - String Quartets Op.51 Nos. 1 & 2 - Janáček Quartet (1988)
EAC Rip | FLAC (img + cue), LOG | TT 59:07 | Covers (jpg 300 dpi) | RAR 304 MB (3% Recovery)
Supraphon | Czechoslovakia | 11 0644-2 111 | 1988

The Janacek Quartet, founded in 1947, bears this name since 1949. The ensemble attained wider recognition particularly after its triumphal performance in West Berlin in 1955. But it was only starting in 1956, when it was officially designated as the chamber ensemble of the Brno State Philharmonic Orchestra, that it could fully begin to develop its concert activity Although there have been several changes among the members of the quartet over the years, the ensemble has maintained its artistic continuity as well as its strikingly unique interpretative style. The Janacek Quartet's repertoire contains works of the Classical and Romantic eras and of Impressionism besides the string quartets of eminent 20th-century masters.

Hagen Quartett - Janacek: String Quartets / Wolf: Italian Serenade
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 230 MB | Full Artwork: 50 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Deutsche Grammophon # 427 669-2 | Country/Year: Germany 1989
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic, Early 20th Century, Chamber Music

"…The Hagens play with almost impossibly precise technique, virtually spotless intonation, and a fluid sense of balance that allows every line and every note of Janácek's scores to easily be heard. What's more, they brilliantly convey the emotional, autobiographical nature of the two works in such a way that even someone unfamiliar with their origins can sense the tension, drama, and angst. The disc concludes with an equally enjoyable performance of Hugo Wolf's Italian Serenade." 5/5 ~allmusicguide

Originally released in 2000 on Ars Musici, the sublime recordings by the Artemis Quartett of György Ligeti's String Quartet No. 1, "Métamorphoses nocturnes" (1953-1954), and his String Quartet No. 2 (1968) fully merit this 2005 reissue by Virgin Classics, not only for the high quality of the music surely some of the most communicative and rewarding quartet music since Bartók or Shostakovich but also for the precision, depth, and resonance of the group's playing.

Rarely do we come across as intimate and wide-angled a set as this collection of Dmitri Shostakovich's 15 string quartets, all of them played by the Russian Borodin Quartet. Recorded in Moscow between 1978 and 1983, the quartets are excellently reproduced in digital sound by Sviatoslav Richter, who maintains just enough shadow from the old Melodiya vinyl's audio vérité to make the music breathe passionately. Of course, it's the Borodins who really amp up the musical breath, whether in their near-giddy reading of the third quartet's first movement or in the 14th's complex, stoutly metaphysical somberness. These recordings will likely always remain the standard for Shostakovich's chamber repertoire because the Borodins were so focused on the Russian quartet literature and so little of anything they played by one composer approached the immediate, mature fullness of Shostakovich's quartets from the first to the last. And they played the music with unflagging intensity. Over the six CDs, it's a fascinating exercise to hear the development of compositional elements between the first (1935) and 15th (1974, the year before his death) quartets. Variations on the passacaglia technique, for example, permeate the music, allowing telescopic focus on Shostakovich's careful mediation of the dialogue between constancy and change, flying motifs from violin to viola to cello and back even as it appeared little fundamental groundwork had changed. Polyphony, dissonance, and aching resonance find a home in the music, showing Shostakovich's Catholic reach–and surely the impetus for his long-standing troubled relationship with Soviet politics.

Andrew Bartlett (Amazon.com)

2014 marks the centenary of Polish-British composer Andrzej Panufnik. Here the Brodsky Quartet joins in this year of reminiscence and celebration with Messages, a recording of works both by Andrzej and his daughter Roxanna Panufnik. String sextets begin and end the disc. In the first, Modlitwa, both father and daughter have composed sections, Roxana Panufnik having contributed to what was originally a vocal work and subsequently made this sextet arrangement. Andrzej Panufnik’s Song to the Virgin Mary also began life in a vocal setting, for a cappella chorus, and was dedicated to his wife, Camilla.

The late Hans Keller regarded Hindemith as one of the few composers able to produce what he called 'intrinsic' quartets, that's to say quartets addressed in the first place to the player (the listener being, as Keller put it, "a more or less welcome eavesdropper"). This collection includes the recently re-discovered early work in C major. The performances are technically and musically excellent. As a previous reviewer has noted, there is much to be said for listening to them in the order in which they were composed, so as to follow the development of Hindemith's style over a period of three decades.