Eroica Szel

You’re holding Flex Ensemble’s third album in your hands – Inside Eroica: an exciting programme that we are enormously proud to present! The following conversation between Martha Bijlsma and Gordon Williamson provides you with some insight into the creative process, our choices and how we landed Inside Eroica.

This disc is a perfect example of what a quartet recording, especially of standard repertoire, should do. It is fresh and invigorating and invites us to reexamine the work of a composer whom we think we know very well. In this second volume of its Mendelssohn series, the Eroica quartet simply dazzles–the ensemble's previous foray (which was its debut recording) clearly was no fluke. As far as the Eroica quartet is concerned, Mendelssohn's quartets are the equal of any of his larger-scale works, and these players show that they can generate the muscle and power to match their conception. The first movement of the third quartet is marked "Molto Allegro vivace".

The Eroica Trio's recording of the Beethoven Triple with the Prague Chamber Orchestra was so successful it landed this piece on Billboards Top 20 for the first time in recording history. The Trio appeared on the German television program "Klassich!" performing the Beethoven Triple Concerto with the Munich Symphony, which was aired throughout Europe.

This disc is a perfect example of what a quartet recording, especially of standard repertoire, should do. It is fresh and invigorating and invites us to reexamine the work of a composer whom we think we know very well. In this second volume of its Mendelssohn series, the Eroica quartet simply dazzles–the ensemble's previous foray (which was its debut recording) clearly was no fluke. As far as the Eroica quartet is concerned, Mendelssohn's quartets are the equal of any of his larger-scale works, and these players show that they can generate the muscle and power to match their conception.

The Eroica Trio's recording career has been cleverly managed, starting with three albums of relatively lightweight, very well played music before finally arriving at major repertory. Tackling these two Brahms masterpieces, the Eroica proves thoroughly up to the task. They handle Brahms's difficult writing with confidence (especially the tricky syncopations), and they can produce large climaxes to compete with the best ensembles.

“If this isn't great interpretation, I don't know what is,” wrote Gramophone’s reviewer in 1968, when this recording was first released, “I have no hesitation in saying that I think it the greatest performance I have yet heard on record.” John Barbirolli, an intense and inspired interpreter of Beethoven’s music, had been conducting the Eroica for many years, but the symphony acquired a special significance for him in the final years of his life. “Strange how the Eroica exhausts me these days,” he wrote in 1966. “It may well be because I am really beginning to plumb its depths.”

Finally, Mendelssohn's string quartets are hitting the big time. Over the past decade, there have been more and, for the most part, better recordings of his quartets that at any time in history. Think of the Alban Berg Quartet's brilliantly bracing recording or the Quatuor Mosaïques' fervently soulful recording. Of course, there have also been some fairly mediocre recordings – think of the Emerson's recklessly energetic recording – and merely passable recordings – think of the Henschel's hastily enthusiastic recording.