Mozart String Quartets

After the early quartets and the famous ‘Dissonance’ Quartet, the Cuarteto Casals continues its exploration of the set of works Mozart dedicated to Joseph Haydn. Here one composer took on the mantle of the other: the younger man, who had now settled in Vienna and had just started a family, was going through an exceptional period of creativity, transfiguring everything he touched with his genius. An exhilarating experience for our Catalan musicians, following hard on the heels of their acclaimed Beethoven cycle.

The Smetana Quartet was a Czech string quartet that was in existence from 1945 to 1989. The Smetana Quartet arose from the Quartet of the Czech Conservatory, which was founded in 1943 (during the Nazi occupation) in Prague by Antonin Kohout, the cellist. With J. Rybensky and L. Kostecky as first and second violins, and Vaclav Neumann as violist, the group gave its first perfirmance as the Smetana Quartet in November 1945, in Prague. Neumann left to pursue conducting in 1947, at which point Rybensky went to the viola desk and Jiri Novak (who shared first violin desk with Josef Vlach, founder of the Vlach Quartet, under Vaclav Talich in the Czech Chamber Orchestra) came in as first violin...

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Quatuor Ébène has done it again. After offering not only pristine and passionate performances of Ravel, Debussy, Faure, Brahms and their recent adventure into FICTION they return to the classics. This well recorded (very presence oriented) recital is all Mozart and it is understandable that this brilliant French quartet would elect to publicly cleanse the palette after the foray into music inspired by Hollywood.