Danel

The gifted Belgian Quatuor Danel turn to two masterpieces by César Franck: his passionate Piano Quintet and the String Quartet. The three-movement Quintet, like Brahms’s op. 34 an expansion of the Schumannian model, is one of Franck’s most infamous works. It immediately established itself, and a second performance with the pianist Marie Poitevin, the later dedicatee of the Prélude, Choral et Fugue, convinced the members of the Société Nationale. Franck’s String Quartet, his last major work, was similarly acclaimed by its first listeners. After its first performance in April 1890, with tears in his eyes, César Franck is said to have told his pupil Vincent d’Indy, “Now you see: at long last the public is beginning to understand me.”

These quartets do inhabit the same stylistic universe as those of Shostakovich, but Weinberg was no clone. The most immediately attractive work is the String Quartet No. 5 in B flat major, Op. 27, composed in 1945. By that time Shostakovich had already begun to back off from his edgily humorous early idiom, but Weinberg apparently absorbed it during his first years in the Soviet Union; at the center of the work lies a blistering scherzo that could have come out of one of Shostakovich's stage works of the 1920s. This can be recommended to anyone who likes Shostakovich's quartets or is interested in the general Russian scene.

James Manheim @ Allmusic

The music of Mieczyslaw Weinberg, who fled the Nazis and endured persecution from Stalin (although, as annotator David Fanning points out here, he regarded the Red Army as his savior), has increased sharply in popularity. Weinberg is part of Shostakovich's stylistic universe and, although the relationship was never a formal one, said that he regarded himself as Shostakovich's pupil. Yet he was no clone. Jewish motifs play a role in some of his music, and in the string quartets here, especially the String Quartet No. 12, Op. 103, Bartók is as important a model as Shostakovich. An excellent conclusion to the Quatuor Danel's Weinberg cycle.

James Manheim @ AllMusic

Even though the dominant figures of Soviet music were Dmitry Shostakovich and Sergey Prokofiev, it has become clear that the work of a third composer, Polish-born Mieczyslaw Weinberg, should be ranked as equally significant. His reputation has rapidly increased in the west due to a growing number of major recordings that confirm his standing, and his impressive compositions are valued by some critics as every bit the equal of any of the better-known modernist masterpieces. In light of the renascence of Weinberg's music, CPO has begun a project with the Quatuor Danel …..

Blair Sanderson @ AllMusic

Volume 5 of CPO’s complete edition of Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s string quartets with the Quatuor Danel continues with the world première recordings of Quartets Nos. 1, 3 and 10. Also included are the Capriccio Op. 11 and Aria Op. 9. The series has been highly acclaimed with volume 1 awarded Chamber Music Choice and volumes 2&3 receiving 5 star reviews in BBC Music Magazine. The series has also been reviewed favourably in Gramophone.

The Quatuor Danel continues its assignment to record the complete string quartets of Weinberg for CPO. It’s something they have so far managed with assurance and a complete appreciation of the idioms involved. Volume 2 presents quartets nos. 7, 11 and 13, three works spanning two decades. No 7 shares a Beethoven Rasumovsky quartet opus number, Op. 59. It was written in 1957. It opens slowly and highly expressively, reminiscent of Shostakovich’s First Quartet perhaps – the name is obviously unavoidable when discussing Weinberg. There are rather formalized klezmer themes in the central movement, and they flicker and fleck the music’s texture, in a way that is mesmerically insistent. The third movement is the longest …..

Jonathan Woolf @ musicweb-international.com

The gifted Belgian Quatuor Danel turn to two masterpieces by César Franck: his passionate Piano Quintet and the String Quartet. The three-movement Quintet, like Brahms’s op. 34 an expansion of the Schumannian model, is one of Franck’s most infamous works. It immediately established itself, and a second performance with the pianist Marie Poitevin, the later dedicatee of the Prélude, Choral et Fugue, convinced the members of the Société Nationale. Franck’s String Quartet, his last major work, was similarly acclaimed by its first listeners. After its first performance in April 1890, with tears in his eyes, César Franck is said to have told his pupil Vincent d’Indy, “Now you see: at long last the public is beginning to understand me.”

Like Shostakovich Weinberg's style in his quartets progressed from relatively simple tonality and tunefulness in the early ones to a sparer, more astringent style later one. We get examples of both of these styles on this CD. The Sixth Quartet from 1946, although fairly straightforward in style and tonality, was on the music czar Andrey Zhdanov's 'banned list' and although the ban was lifted not long after, Weinberg did not return to the string quartet form for nine years. The Sixth is big – thirty-three minutes – and contains …..

Scott Morrison @ Amazon.com