Takács Quartet

‘a model for what chamber music should be’ (The Guardian)

Schubert’s famous String Quartet, D810, subtitled ‘Death and the Maiden’, is one of the pillars of the repertoire. This new performance is electrifying, and was recorded following a global concert series, enthusiastically welcomed in the press: The Takács’ reading of the second movement was characterized by unremitting pain and mystery. While three of the musicians intoned the insistent theme of Death in pursuit of the Maiden, Edward Dusinberre’s violin expressed poignantly the Maiden’s tender fragility and rising panic. The final movement, in the form of a somewhat crazed tarantella, was taken at breakneck speed, as if the four musicians were driving wild horses—though they never lost control of the reins. Risk-taking, a Takács trademark, certainly didn’t fail here.

The reviewer of the opus 51 Quartets in Gramophone in September 1990 commented: “… in the tonal mellowness and bloom of the recording itself, not to mention their own intuitively musical phrasing, their intimate interplay and subtleties of balance, this disc somehow manages to bring home Brahms’s true richness as a quartet composer …”.

"It is impossible to exaggerate the beauty of the tone-colours that these four musicians achieve... If late Beethoven is the Holy Grail of quartet playing, then the Takács Quartet has found it"
The Guardian concert review