Mandelring Quartet

Both Janacek’s string quartets, alongside works by Schoenberg, Berg and Zemlinsky, form the pinnacles of modern chamber music in the inter-war period.

Janáček composed the quartets in 1923 and 1928 respectively and gave them revealing sobriquets. ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ for the first quartet refers to a novella by Leo Tolstoy in which the emotional power of music is held responsible for a matrimonial drama. If this quartet was secretly addressed to Kamila Stösslová, the object of Janáček’s adoration in his later life, then the sobriquet of the second quartet, ‘Intimate Letters’, refers rather openly to the same addressee. The composer reinforced this amorous subtext by using an instrument which has love in its name: “The whole thing will be held together by a special instrument”, Janáček wrote, “it is called viola d’amour – viola of love.” Janáček was fascinated by the silvery sound of the richly decorated instrument in the viola register. For practical reasons he had to dispense with the viola d’amore and adapt the work for an ordinary viola but for this recording, Gunter Teuffel and the Mandelring Quartet have reconstructed the original setting, offering Janáček’s second string quartet in both versions, for viola as well as viola d’amore.

After the ‘song’ year of 1840 and the ‘symphonic’ of 1841, his ‘chamber music’ year followed and saw the creation of three string quartets and two of the 19th -century’s most beautiful chamber pieces with piano. In the autumn of 1842, in a creative frenzy, Schumann composed the Quintet Op. 44 and the Quartet Op. 47. The piano part was of course intended for his new wife Clara. In both works the jubilant atmosphere of the outer movements, combining Mozart’s vitality, Bach’s polyphony and Schumann’s dreamy disposition, is ravishing. In the middle movements, delicate scherzi à la Mendelssohn and two large-scale slow movements can be found: an expressive funeral march in the quintet and an expansive cantabile in the cello part of the quartet, which has become one of the most popular movements amongst Schumann’s chamber works.

In this new recording the Mandelring Quartett join forces with French pianist Claire-Marie Le Guay. A winner of numerous international competitions Le Guay plays regularly in the important concert venues, appearing in solo recitals as well as in concerts with orchestra. In addition, her passion for chamber music has led her to play with noted soloists and ensembles.

With Vol.V the Mandelring Quartet completes the fifteen string quartets of Shostakovich. Highly praised in the press as one of the outstanding complete editions of our time, the last volume presents the Quartets Nos. 11, 13 and 15.

The Eleventh Quartet received its premiere in the former Leningrad at the preliminary celebrations of the composer's 60th birthday. During the very same night, the composer suffered a serious heart attack which changed his life and way of thinking. This 1966 quartet was dedicated to the late violinist of the Beethoven Quartet, an ensemble with which the composer was intimately acquainted, appears as a multi-movement suite in which character pieces such as the "Etude" and the "Humoresque" turn up - with a grim, cynical humour, of course.The 13th Quartet composed in 1970 is dedicated to the violist of the Beethoven Quartet and is a portrait, in a single monumental movement, of this instrument that Shostakovich loved so much. In the final, 15th Quartet (1974), the composer finally seizes upon a radical formal solution: six Adagio movements come together to form a large work of mourning which bears no more dedication… With Shostakovich's fifteen string quartets the Mandelring Quartet presents a quartet cycle, which in its entirety probably represents the most important corpus of string quartets of the 20th century.

"This is uncanny playing and it has been recorded with uncanny clarity and presence by Audite's engineers… the Shostakovich cycle of choice." International Record Review

Shostakovich's fifteen string quartets probably represent the most important corpus of string quartets of the 20th-century. His most innovative work, and perhaps his most important quartet, is the String Quartet No. 12 (1968) where the composer makes systematic but not dogmatic use of dodecaphonic methods for the first time. String Quartet No. 14 (1973), on the other hand, was written during his final period when Shostakovich increasingly composed slow movements and intoned laments. String Quartet No. 10 (1964) where the goose-step of the rulers can be heard, as well as the will of the individual to survive, sets the tone. Here the Mandelring Quartet present the fourth volume in an already acclaimed cycle.

This year the Mandelring Quartet will celebrate the 25th anniversary of its concert debut and since 2001 has issued its recordings on the Audite label.These CD and SACD recordings illustrate its outstanding quality and wide-ranging repertoire, including a Schubert string quartet cycle, piano quintets by Brahms and Franck and chamber works by the French early romantic composer Georges Onslow.The series 'Brahms and his Contemporaries' is devoted to the quartets of Brahms and less well-known composers such as Friedrich Gernsheim and Heinrich von Herzogenberg.

There is no doubt that Ludwig van Beethoven’s legacy was fundamental in the creation of Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartets which are outstanding both in their craftsmanship and spirituality. They are also convincing in their palette of forms and expressions on a chamber music level, as well as their technical demands and cyclical links between movements. The confessional character of the works is determined by three secret acknowledgements: to his beloved pupil Galina Ustvolskaya, his late wife Nina and his third wife to whom Shostakovich dedicated his ninth string quartet. This is the third volume in the series by the Mandelring Quartet.

SACD + DVD