Budapest+quartet

Vincent d’Indy was born in Paris in 1851 and became a pupil and leading disciple of César Franck, whose music he did much to propagate. He distinguished himself as a teacher, founder of the influential and rigorous Schola Cantorum, and writer on musical subjects, and was an important figure in the musical life of Paris in his time, although by the time of his death a new era in music was well under way.

The Matangi Quartet's 2005 release Scandinavia has one slight problem: while two of the composers, Edvard Grieg and David Monrad Johansen, were Norwegian, the third, Julius Röntgen, was Dutch! His presence is explained by his close friendship with Grieg, and the Matangi Quartet's decision to include his attractive two-movement Quartettino in A minor as filler is barely justifiable through that connection. Grieg's String Quartet in G minor, Op. 27, and Johansen's String Quartet, Op. 35, both deserve their place here, not only due to their creators' nationality but because they are solid examples of quartet writing outside the German tradition, and demonstrate the Norwegian proclivity to incorporate folk-inspired melodies in looser, more sectionalized developments than are found in Classical, motivically integrated models.

This set of Beethoven string quartets by the Borodin Quartet reflects a mature perspective on the works. It's not that it lacks energy the Vivaces are vivacious and the Allegros have plenty of brio but it has wisdom and a maturity not generally characteristic of performances by younger quartets. These performances are comparable with the Budapest Quartet's last set of the quartets.

Vladimir Martynov, born in 1946, is one of the cohort of composers that includes Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli, and Valentin Silvestrov, who grew up under the influence of the former Soviet Union and abandoned the modernism of their youth to embrace a tonal language of greater simplicity with an aesthetic informed by an intimate spirituality. In spite of the similarities in their backgrounds and journeys, each has a distinctive sound, and Martynov, who is perhaps the least well-known in the West, brings a new perspective to the tradition of European music shaped by mysticism and minimalism. On the surface Martynov's music doesn't have an immediate resemblance to minimalism (apart from the directness of its tonal language), but like minimalism it uses repetition as a structural element and it is concerned with the perception of the passage of time, which it tends to stretch out with almost unbearable poignancy into what commentator Greg Dubinsky describes as "a prolonged state of grace." His harmonic vocabulary is characterized by the fecund tonal richness of post-Romanticism without the angst or decadence sometimes associated with the music of that era.

The music of Théodore Dubois (1837–1924) has rather been overshadowed by that of other French composers of the same period, not least Fauré and Saint-Saëns. But Dubois does not deserve his relative neglect: not only was he a superlative craftsman, but he could also unfold a fetching melody and had a strong sense of musical narrative. This recital of chamber works for oboe and strings is noteworthy for a further quality, one often underestimated: much of the music is, quite simply, charming.