The String Chees Incident

An exciting young Dutch-based ensemble, performing on gut strings, brings flair and historically informed style to four little-known examples of repertoire from the dawn of the string quartet.

It was thanks to his father's penchant for organizing musical concerts in his family's Berlin apartment on Sunday mornings that the 11-year-old Felix Mendelssohn began to compose quite a long series of string symphonies, and also that the works were initially performed.

Composer Thomas Cabaniss and the Charleston Symphony String Quartet bring a new and exquisite recording of Cabaniss’s third, fourth, and sixth string quartets to Navona Records.

The last two of the six String Quartets written by the composer of The Miraculous Mandarin, bringing together the most perfectly balanced between its two night musics, framed by three pillars of an arc built with ‘country’ material as authentic as it is violent (5th), and finally, the distressed, funereal farewell of the 6th with its sad (‘mesto’) ritornello.

Continuing their project to record all the Shostakovich string quartets, award-winning artists the Carducci Quartet return to Signum Classics for their third album of string quartets by Shostakovich.

This recording showcases 3 string quartets by 3 Galician composers from 3 consecutive centuries: Adalid (19th century), Arriola (20th century) and Durán (21st century). Each composer represents the experiences of their respective lifetimes in Galicia, a place with a true vocation for universality.

Little known in the West and in the former USSR, the name of Weinberg, the third great Russian composer of the 20th century, after Prokofiev and Shostakovich, seems to be slowly emerging from the shadow of the latter, his protector and friend. Far from being an epigone, he is rather, by his temperament as a symphonist and the importance of his chamber music, the spiritual heir. This part of his vast catalogue, not written to put food on the table, includes 17 quartets, the most experimental body of his work along with his sonatas, those for cello, written with Rostropovich in mind, being henceforth consecrated.

Opus 18 needs little introduction and is often revered as demonstrating Beethoven’s total mastery of the Classical String Quartet. The Eybler Quartet completes its exploration of these iconic quartets in an album that showcases radiantly Beethoven’s fiendishly difficult tempi and his genius for finding contrast within a single pulse as well as highlighting the depths of his humour, wit and irony. This second volume features the String Quartets nos. 4-6.

The Concordia String Trio explores and expands the eclectic repertoire of an under-appreciated genre — the string trio. This versatile ensemble has built a reputation for its exciting performances and innovative programs, juxtaposing pieces from the standard string trio repertoire with new compositions and little-known works of great composers. On this release, the Concordia String Trio performs a program of great American works for String Trio, including works by Walter Piston, Alan Hovhaness, Leonard Mark Lewis, John Harbison, Henry Cowell, and David Colson. The trio is made up of Marcia Henry Liebenow, concertmaster of the Peoria Symphony Orchestra and professor at Bradley University, Leslie Perna, respected artist and teacher, and Karen Becker, active soloist and avid chamber and orchestral player.

Here is the second volume of The Young Danish String Quartet's highly acclaimed miniseries of Carl Nielsen's string quartets. The first volume in The Young Danish String Quartet's mini-series of Carl Nielsen's quartets was selected as Editor's Choice in Gramophone last summer, and a number of prestigious magazines and newspapers from all over the world agreed: This interpretation of Nielsen's string quartets sheds brilliant new light on Denmark's national composer.