Szymanowski & Rózycki - String Quartets - Hyperion: CDA67684 - download

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…Szymanowski's quartets are subtle works that yield up their secrets slowly. The Royals have a special feeling for texture and colour, which is vital in this music, but an equally strong sense... — BBC Music Magazine, February 2009, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 5th Jan 2009
Catalogue No: CDA67684
Label: Hyperion
Length: 70 minutes

Szymanowski: String Quartet No. 1 in C major, Op. 37

Work length19:16

$3.30

$4.50

Royal String Quartet

I. Lento assai – Allegro moderato

Track length8:33

$1.10

$1.50

II. Andantino semplice, in modo d'una canzone – Adagio dolcissimo – Lento assai

Track length6:40

$1.10

$1.50

III. Scherzando alla burlesca: Vivace

Track length4:03

$1.10

$1.50

Rózycki, L: String Quartet in D minor, Op. 49

Work length32:40

$3.30

$4.50

Royal String Quartet

I. Andante – Allegro

Track length16:53

$1.10

$1.50

II. Andante

Track length5:48

$1.10

$1.50

III. Allegro

Track length9:59

$1.10

$1.50

Szymanowski: String Quartet No. 2, Op. 56

Work length18:19

$3.30

$4.50

Royal String Quartet

I. Moderato, dolce e tranquillo

Track length8:13

$1.10

$1.50

II. Vivace scherzando

Track length4:26

$1.10

$1.50

III. Lento

Track length5:40

$1.10

$1.50

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The all-Polish Royal String Quartet are one of the most interesting and dynamically developing string quartets of the young generation. They are particularly acclaimed for their performances of music from their homeland, and have received the Special Prize of the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage ‘in recognition of their contribution to Polish culture’. Continuing this theme, their debut recording for Hyperion features music by Szymanowski and Rózycki.

The two Szymanowski quartets are contrasting masterpieces from different periods in the composer’s varied career. The first seems reminiscent of Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No 1 in its impressionistic sound world, its voluptuous, erotic sensibility and its layers of texture and colour. The second quartet is from the composer’s last phase, and draws on the full range of folk materials he had encountered in the Tatra highlands, and which inspired him to a new and more ‘authentic’ modernism. It is a piece of granitic strength and ruggedness.

We complete the disc with a contemporary rarity, the String Quartet by Rózycki, a work which shows the virtues of a late-Romantic idiom untouched by French or Russian style, and touched only lightly by central European folk influences.

Reviews

February 2009

…Szymanowski's quartets are subtle works that yield up their secrets slowly. The Royals have a special feeling for texture and colour, which is vital in this music, but an equally strong sense of structure. They never drop the lyrical thread of the rapturous middle movement. Their opening of the Second Quartet has a floating, weightless quality, contrasting with the weighty textures that bring to the central Vivace scherzando, where the folksiness of Tatra mountain dances is felt. ..the String Quartet (1916) of Ludomir Rózycki... is a hidden gem... At almost 17 minutes' duration, the first movement is nearly as long as each of Szymanowski's quartets, but Rózycki's high inspiration and the Royals' impeccable playing sustain it.

2010

This is what Szymanowski needs: firm, fullbodied playing, with a wide range of dynamic, colour and attack, and with all the unexpected twists and turns confidently negotiated. The Royal Quartet are as finely tuned to his quirkiness as to his trademark voluptuous post-impressionism and moments of mystic withdrawal or volatile transition. In every way this makes a persuasive bid for best available version.
Ludomir Rózycki was two years younger than Szymanowski, with whom he co-founded the group that came to be known as Young Poland, and he was prominent enough as composer and teacher in Lwów, Warsaw and Katowice to have at least two books written about him. Most highly regarded for his symphonic poems and songs, he wrote his sole string quartet in 1916 during a stay in Paris.
It moves confidently enough within its somewhat impersonal Romantic idiom, occasionally giving off a perfume of Debussy and Ravel, and in the finale even some moments of Bartók. This is a not dissimilar mixture to Szymanowski, in fact, but in far less concentrated form, and at nearly 33 minutes the prospect of a concert-hall breakthrough is rather remote. On CD, however, the piece is more than welcome as a coupling to the Royal's outstanding Szymanowski.
Szymanowski can take a degree more atmosphere in the acoustic than we get here; but the clarity of the recording certain lets the myriad details speak eloquently.

March 2009

This is what Szymanowski needs: firm, full-boded playing, with a wide range of dynamic, colour and attack, and with all the unexpected twists and turns confidently negotiated.

27th February 2009

[The Royal Quartet] play Szymanowski's two quartets with exactly the right combination of local folksy fervour and the textural variety that their country's most important composer after Chopin shared with his modernist contemporaries. The results are the finest performances of these two compact and luminously intense works currently available.

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Szymanowski & Rózycki - String Quartets

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