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See Terms & Conditions for p&p rates. | |  | Elias String Quartet play Haydn & Schumann
Elias String Quartet: Sara Bitlloch, Donald Grant (violins), Martin Saving (viola) & Marie Bitlloch (cello) The Elias String Quartet returns to Wigmore Hall Live with a much anticipated disc of Haydn and Schumann, recorded live in concert, September 2010. Formed at the Royal Northern College of Music in 1998, the ensemble quickly became established among the leading quartets performing internationally today, and is now supported by the prestigious Wigmore Hall Emerging Talent scheme. Widely praised for the vibrancy and intensity of its performances, the quartet has received particular critical acclaim for recent recordings, and in April 2010 its disc of Mendelssohn, Mozart and Schubert on the Wigmore Hall Live label [WHLIVE0028] received the BBC Music Magazine Newcomer Award. “It's a fascinating programme: the Haydn features a dazzling presto finale brimming with theatrical gaiety and virtuoso flair, while the Schumann is explored with marvellous collective vigour and sensitivity – the pulsing drive of both the scherzo and the finale disguising the deft lightness of the bowing.” The Independent, 13th April 2012 “They make a beautiful sound, burnished yet translucent, and play with vigour and subtlety. On the strength of these performances, I find their fluid, yielding style more suited to Schumann than to Haydn...The Schumann is a delight.” Sunday Times, 3rd June 2012 “a keen feeling for musical character, immaculate ensemble, lively articulation and just the right degree of vibration to ensure both warmth and clarity of sound...the Elias genuinely catch the ardent waywardness of Schumann spirit. They also make something mesmeric of the sudden, still, drone-based episode near the end of the rustic-style finale.” BBC Music Magazine, August 2012 **** “Slender tone, soft, delicate and withdrawn greets you at the start of Schumann's first Quartet, the Introduzione played Andante espressivo as instructed. The Elias String Quartet observe the metronome marking ((as they do in the other movements too) but there isn't a hint of rigidity...the Elias make their points and there is no lack of variety in mood” Gramophone Magazine, October 2012 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Schumann: String Quartets Nos. 1–3 & Piano Quintet
Ilya Gringolts (violin), Anahit Kurtikyan (violin), Silvia Simonescu (viola) & Claudius Hermann (cello) Ilya Gringolts completes his survey of the major Schumann chamber works with the 3 string quartets and one of the composer’s masterpieces, the piano quintet op 44. “These four fine players are consistently musical in their approach and there is nothing outlandish or suspect about their interpretations. And therein perhaps lies their weakness, for it's precisely that degree of risk-taking that makes this music come alive...There is elegance to the new reading, though, which can be persuasive, such as in the variation-form second movement of No. 2” Gramophone Magazine, January 2012 “This new set...is of a very high standard: the account of the powerful first movement of the A minor is breathtakingly impressive - at times, Schumann's invention seems fit to burst the confines of four stringed instruments - and I was captivated by this intense performance throughout...a fine set of performances, very well recorded in a St Petersburg church in a rich and naturally warm acoustic.” International Record Review, January 2012 | | Onyx - ONYX4081 (CD - 2 discs) Normally: $25.25 Special: $17.67 |
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On this disc we present three masterpieces of the nineteenth-century chamber music repertoire: Schumann’s set of string quartets, Op. 41. The works are performed by the Doric String Quartet, exclusive Chandos artists and among the most impressive young quartets on the classical music scene today. They regularly perform at major festivals and venues throughout the UK as well as across continental Europe, Asia, and the US. The three string quartets, Op. 41 make up Schumann’s only published contribution to the genre. They were completed during a period of intense creative activity in 1842. In February, Schumann noted in his diary that he was having ‘continual quartet thoughts’. In April and May, he devoted himself to studying the quartets by Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart; in early June, the first two quartets were completed, and the third followed soon after in July that same year. Brimming with the canons with which Schumann was so taken, as well as his characteristic turn of melody, these works all display in full the spirit that one would expect from this most romantic of romantic composers. Schumann arranged for the first, private, performance of the quartets to take place on 13 September 1842, as a present for his wife, Clara, on her twenty-third birthday. Clara, always supportive of her husband’s efforts, praised them as ‘lucid, finely worked, and always in quartet idiom’. The esteemed theorist and composer Moritz Hauptmann said: ‘His [Schumann’s] first, which delighted me immensely, made me marvel at his talent… it is cleverly conceived and held together, and a great deal of it is very beautiful.’ “The Dorics play with warmth, finesse and exciting attack.” The Observer, 2nd October 2011 “Among numerous affecting details: the sinuous allegro opening of No 2; the driven upsurge of its scherzo; and the plangent sigh that is No 3’s andante espressivo introduction, rarely more espressivo than here.” Sunday Times, 9th October 2011 “Here's a disc that merits an especially big welcome...At last comes a strong challenger which brings together all three of these wonderful but so often misunderstood quartets. The play has all the fragile pathos, volatility, exuberance, and quirky humour one hopes to find in this music...The Doric Quartet also have a compelling sense of how Schumann's moods can turn on a musical sixpence...What more can one say?” BBC Music Magazine, December 2011 ***** “The starry young Doric Quartet delves into Schumann's fantastical worlds in a performance rich in both imagination and care. Applying a generally delicate approach, with thin vibrato expressively aided by the use of well-judged portamentaos, they draw out a wealth of nuances. The mood of intimacy, half-lights and many-shaded moods is enhanced by their efforts to find a 'period' style appropriate to Schumann and his whirlwind imagination.” Classic FM Magazine, December 2011 ****  BBC Music Magazine
Disc of the month - December 2011 |
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| |  | Beethoven & Schumann: String Quartets
This quartet was originally the Sonare Quartet, which performed many twentieth century works. There has been another Beethoven Quartet, made up of musicians from the Moscow Philharmonic and Shostakovich created his quartets for that ensemble. The new BeethovenQuartett was formed in 2006, the 100th anniversary of Shostakovich’s birth and concentrates on great works of the past. | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Mendelssohn & Schumann: String Quartets
| | | (also available to download from $10.50) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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Schumann imbues his string quartets with an expressive aspect which is found nowhere else in his output, revealing his secret garden as well as what might be the calmer part of his inner self. His Opus 41 also bears the double stamp of overflow and restraint, and is without doubt one for the most highly developed examples of symbiosis between the expressive needs of romanticism and the formal demands of writing for sixteen strings. “Dashed off in a few weeks of 1842, these Quartets fuse echoes of Beethoven and Mendelssohn with an obsessiveness of Schumann's own. Passionate playing.” BBC Music Magazine, February 2012 **** “The quartets, as represented on this superb reissue by the exquisite Ysaye Quartet, are quintessential Schumann, with the composer's deeply Romantic psyche, his light touch, his playful qualities, his gorgeous melodies and tugging rhythms all beautifully captured.” Herald Scotland, 29th January 2012 | | | Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days. |
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| |  | Schumann - String Quartet & Piano Quintet
In commemoration of Robert Schumann’s bicentennial, the mighty Prazak Quartet is joined by Russian pianist Yevgeny Koroliov, to reproduce the concert given the morning of 8th January 1843 at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig by Clara Schumann and Ferdinand David’s quartet. | | | Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days. |
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| |  | Schumann - Piano Quintet & String Quartets
The original versions of Schumann’s string quartets have never been heard in recorded form. The Leipzig String Quartet discovered this repertoire gap and has now filled it with a fascinating recording on two CDs. As an encore, the four musicians present Schumann’s world-famous Piano Quintet Op.44. Their partner on the piano is Christian Zacharias, so this is an absolutely top lineup. “Working with Christian Zacharias the Leipzig Quartet turn out a performance that combines subtlety and strength on the minute expressive and grand architectural planes....For sheer joie de vivre the Zacharias-Leipzig Scherzo is hard to match.” BBC Music Magazine, July 2010 **** | | | Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days. |
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| |  | String Quartets
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Gramophone Magazine
Gramophone Awards 2012