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See Terms & Conditions for p&p rates. | |  | Janine Jansen plays Schoenberg & Schubert
Schoenberg: | Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4 for String Sextet Janine Jansen (violin), Boris Brovtsyn (violin), Maxim Rysanov (viola), Amihai Grosz (viola), Torleif Thedéen (cello), Jens Peter Maintz (cello) | Schubert: | String Quintet in C major, D956 Janine Jansen (violin), Boris Brovtsyn (violin), Maxim Rysanov (viola), Torleif Thedéen (cello), Jens Peter Maintz (cello) |
Dutch violinist Janine Jansen presents a new album coupling two of the most heart-felt masterpieces of the Viennese romantic repertoire. Schubert’s last and greatest chamber work, the sublime String Quintet in C major, is contrasted with the young Schoenberg’s earliest masterpiece, Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night). For this recording, derived from emotionally charged live performances given in Dortmund in May 2012, Janine Jansen is joined by a group of exceptional young musicians who are all close personal friends as well as fellow members of Spectrum Concerts Berlin, the prestigious German chamber music group with whom Jansen has played since 1998. Alongside Swedish cellist Torleif Thedéen and Ukrainian viola player Maxim Rysanov, who both joined Jansen for her 2007 Bach album, they include Russian-born violinist Boris Brovtsyn, Israeli violist Amihai Grosz and German cellist Jens Peter Maintz. “All-star line-ups can be problematic in chamber music, but the depth of drama and colour in the stinging, swooning timbres identified by the Dutch violinist Janine Jansen and her friends...makes this Verklärte Nacht impressive.” The Independent, 20th April 2013 **** “they bring silky skills and subtle touches to two great string pieces...The dapper phrasing and translucent textures are wonderfully calculated, but the emotions sound a little lightweight, and the Schubert needs a sense of profundity.” The Times, 20th April 2013 *** “There's no trace here of starry individualism, but instead a real feeling of collegiate responsibility in the way that all the players constantly listen to each other and shade their own contributions accordingly. But, for my taste at least, it's much too strongly flavoured” The Guardian, 25th April 2013 *** “They generate an intoxicating mix of heady passions in Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, at the same time maintaining impressive clarity of texture and shaping what can seem a sprawling work. And in a fresh-sounding performance of Schubert’s late quintet, they bring a relish of its boldness as well as an ambiguous poignancy.” Sunday Times, 12th May 2013 | 
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| |  | Schubert: String Quintet & String Quartet D703
The matchless Takács Quartet return to Schubert. Their first disc on Hyperion—his ‘Death and the Maiden’ and ‘Rosamunde’ quartets—received unprecedently lavish critical acclaim, acknowledging a new modern benchmark for these works. Now they turn to perhaps the most hauntingly beautiful of all Schubert’s chamber works, the String Quintet—completed six weeks before the composer’s death. Schubert included a second cello in the texture, creating a sumptuously warm sound, a cradling intimacy. Here the Takács players are joined by cellist Ralph Kirshbaum. Also recorded here is the ‘Quartettsatz’: a fragment—of the highest quality—of a String Quartet in C minor abandoned by the composer. “This is exactly the kind of aristocratic, intellectually commanding playing you would expect of the Takacs Quartet...The Takacs pace the argument superbly, so that everything in this huge, complex structure seems to happen at exactly the right time...Yet for all its Olympian beauty and grandeur, this performance isn't quite so strong when it comes to capturing the human side of Schubert.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2013 *** “As anticipated, there's much to admire in their pacing and detailing of the piece. Subtle changes of colour abound...Tempi are generally very well-judged...The playing is consistently impressive but what I missed was a sense of fearlessness...the flexibility of the leader Edward Dusinberre's phrasing is a particular joy, as is his sound - that ideal mix of warmth and precision” Gramophone Magazine, December 2012 “The recording — wonderfully vivid and “present” — is all that one expects from the producer, Andrew Keener, and the quality of the playing and musical insights is superlative...The sonorities the Takacs players and Kirshbaum bring to this great music are quasi-orchestral, but they convey the intimate pages of the score in a manner that is both soul-baring and deeply moving.” Sunday Times, 28th October 2012 “Their performance, with Ralph Kirshbaum fitting effortlessly into the ensemble as second cellist, is never conceived as a reassuring tour around one of western music's supreme achievements. There's always an undertow of unease...It's a formidably satisfying performance” The Guardian, 25th October 2012 ***** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Schubert: String Quintet in C major, D956
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| |  | Schubert: String Quintet in C major, D956
The process of creating a quintet by adding a cello to the standard string quartet is always an act of some significance, whether the composer is Boccherini, Onslow, or Schubert. This is particularly true of Schubert's Quintet op. posth. 163, for to the specific characteristics of an instrumental medium subtly weighted towards the bass it adds such mastery of form, so evident an orchestral element, such an overwhelming metaphysical dimension that it is now recognised as one of the supreme peaks of chamber music. After trying out several different chamber combinations, Antje Weithaas, Daniel Sepec, Tabea Zimmermann and Jean-Guihen Queyras founded the Arcanto Quartet in 2002. The four musicians, who in addition to their musical affinities also share a close personal friendship, attracted the attention of the musical world right from their first concert in Stuttgart in 2004. Since then the quartet has performed at all the leading concert halls, including the Wigmore Hall in London. The group regularly plays quintet repertoire with the pianist Silke Avenhaus and the cellist Olivier Marron. “Listening to this intense, richly expressive account, you wonder again how superior spirits ever had the nerve to patronise Schubert’s quintet...The Arcanto and the cellist Olivier Marron — driven, passionate yet exceptional in clarity of texture — realise the work’s combination of danger and yearning, of desperation and dreamlike beauty, to an inspiring degree.” Sunday Times, 12th August 2012 “Can the market bear another recording of a work so popular as to be almost hackneyed? Yes, when the playing has the detail, the muscularity, the daring and sparkle displayed here. Tempi are brisk but not rushed; vibrato is kept under tight rein and the slow movement sings tenderly rather than sobs, making it all the more expressive. The outer movements shine in perfect but vigorous ensemble.” The Observer, 2nd September 2012 “This is a performance of the highest class, gripping you from the moment that four of the five players set bow to string at the outset … the overall impression is of extreme thoughtfulness … Comparisons seem pointless. Notwithstanding the countless versions of this piece, this is one for the gods.” International Record Review, October 2012 “An account that brinds out the depths of light and shade in Schubert’s masterpiece … Throughout, the intonation is impeccable and, thanks also to excellent sound quality, this newcomer can be strongly recommended.” The Strad, November/December 2012 “Their sound is distinctively bright and takes the robust-but-sensitive approach that always makes them such appealing candidate for the performance of the cornerstones of chamber repertoire...However, the strongest recommendation for this disc...is the simple point that they manage to bring out the earlier Classical influences in the music that are often passed over in favour of soupy indulgence.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2012 “This version is exceptionally well recorded, with superb balance among the instruments...The players of the Arcanto Quartet, as well as the second cellist Olivier Marron, adopt an austere approach to tone, using very little vibrato...the Arcanto score highly. What I missed was the abandon which is to be found in the very finest performances.” BBC Music Magazine, Christmas 2012 **** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Fitzwilliam String Quartet Play Schubert, Brahms & Wolf
One of the most gorgeous recorded versions of Schubert’s String Quintet is now available once more, after its relatively short-lived release as a full-price CD. The cellist was Christopher van Kampen, with whom the Fitzwilliams performed often. Appearing on CD for the first time is the Quartet’s recording of the Brahms Clarinet Quintet, with Alan Hacker (who sweeps away any of the work’s ‘autumnal’ associations, emphasizing, rather, its Zigeuner elements) – one of Britain’s finest performers described by Alan George in his introductory note as ‘totally inspirational and revelatory in everything he did and touched, based on an obsessively enquiring and probing mind, allied to a flair in performance which, at its best, could have listeners eating out of his hands’. Wolf’s little Italian Serenade too makes a first appearance on CD. Alan George writes introductory notes and in addition to his note on the Schubert String Quintet and Wolf’s Italian Serenade, and Alan Hacker’s on the Brahms Clarinet Quintet, is a fascinating essay by Wilfrid Mellers entitled ‘Schubert’s Dream of Eden’. As well there is a biography of the Fitzwilliam Quartet and a note on their Decca recording team. “This is a thoughtful performance … In the first movement the cellos play that marvellous second subject as Schubert wanted it, pianissimo, resisting the temptation to show off their tone mezzo-forte; and very lovely it sounds. The whole ensemble responds with unusual skill when Schubert asks for a diminuendo when the music is already pp, and that takes some doing. But there is plenty of vigour for contrast.” Gramophone Magazine (Schubert) “This is a very sensitive performance of the Brahms in which just about everything seems to go well. The first movement has arguably exactly the right degree of forward pressure without losing any of its reflective beauty; the second catches exactly the right degree of Hungarian style for the passages based on that. In the third movement the wisps of sound are thrown off with exceptional skill. […] Overall, this performance is among the very best.” Gramophone Magazine (Brahms) “a splendidly lively reading” Gramophone Magazine (Wolf) “finely paced and beautifully integrated” Penguin Guide (Brahms) “a sparkling account … well-defined recording” Penguin Guide *** (Wolf) “a reading exceptionally faithful to Schubert’s markings, yet one which with freshness and seeming spontaneity conveys the work’s masterly power and impulse too […] The reading overall is deeply thoughtful, never exaggerated in expressiveness, but naturally compelling […] The recording is superbly full and atmospheric and has remarkable presence” Penguin Guide *** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Schubert: Quintet in C D956 & Quartettsatz D703
Cellist David Watkin, formerly of the Eroica Quartet, joins the Tokyos in this distinguished reading of Schubert’s 'Quintet in C' - the last and perhaps the most haunting of all his chamber works, in which light and shadow, serenity and drama are presented in constant alternation. The programme also includes the 'Quartettsatz' of 1820 with its fragmentary slow movement. “Almost all the players who perform here seem stirred enough by the music's pathos and power to rise to the occasion...[to give] an intense, sweeping account of the work. I have no complaints, and for anyone who doesn't want the final degree of penetrating lyricism and anguish which you find in the very finest readings...this may prove an ideal version.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2011 **** “The Tokyo String Quartet with David Watkin promise much as they traverse the slow harmonic progression that opens the first movement...They finish as impressively as they begin; but the middle movements arouse reservations...A degree of objectivity throughout weakens the reach to Elysium...The Tokyo stand back, refusing the minatory experience.” Gramophone Magazine, January 2012 “A great deal of care and thought about phrasing, articulation, accents and dynamics has evidently gone into this impressive performance of the quintet...As a result, the essentially driven, haunted character of the work comes out unusually strongly...The Quartettsatz is vividly played, and it’s a bonus to hear the fragmentary andante.” Sunday Times, 27th November 2011 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Schubert - String Quintet
“The Belcea Quartet throw every fibre of their beings into the most vivid projection of the masterpieces they undertake” (The Independent), The Belcea Quartet has added three late masterpieces by Franz Schubert to their impressive discography on EMI Classics: the Quartet in D Minor ‘Death and the Maiden’, the Quartet in G Major D887 and the sublime String Quintet in C Major with Valentin Erben of the Alban Berg Quartet as the second cellist. The Quartet in D minor ‘Death and the Maiden’ is one of two large-scale string quartets that Schubert composed in 1824. The subtitle refers to his famous song of the same name, the melody of which he used here as the basis for a set of variations in the second movement. The G Major Quartet of 1826 was the composer’s 15th and final string quartet. Its emotional and technical challenges were such that only the first movement was performed in public during Schubert’s lifetime and he was unable to find a publisher for it. The Quartet was first performed in its entirety in 1850 and was first published the following year. The String Quintet in C Major dates from the last months of Schubert’s life, in 1828. The addition of the cello makes for a rich texture and powerful sound where needed but not to the exclusion of exquisite, soft, ethereal sections. Corina Belcea-Fisher, first violinist of the Belcea Quartet said, “It is a great challenge to capture all the varied emotions of the piece, emotions that can switch from one second to the next. It has been a great privilege for us to explore this work with Valentin (Erben), to be able to draw from his resources and his knowledge.” From November 2009 until January 2010, the Belcea Quartet and Valentin Erben will make an extensive tour of Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Germany and Holland with a programme that includes the Schubert String Quintet. Their tour features a concert at London’s Wigmore Hall on December 10th. The Belcea Quartet was established at the Royal College of Music in 1994 and has since been coached by the Chilingirian, Amadeus and Alban Berg Quartets. It is the Associate Ensemble at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Quartet in Residence at Bucharest’s Atheneum Concert Hall. The Quartet’s engagements regularly take them to such prestigious international venues as Vienna’s Konzerthaus and Musikverein, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Brussels’ Palais des Beaux Arts, Lisbon’s Gulbenkian, Zurich’s Tonhalle, Stockholm’s Konzerthuset, Paris’ Châtelet and Opera Bastille, Milan’s Sala Verdi, New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center and San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, and to festivals throughout Europe. In the UK they regularly appear at the Edinburgh, Aldeburgh, Perth, Bath and Cheltenham festivals, and at the Wigmore Hall, where they were the Resident String Quartet from 2001 to 2006. Leading instrumentalists with whom they collaborate include Thomas Adès, Piotr Anderszewski, Natalie Clein, Michael Collins, Imogen Cooper, Valentin Erben, Isabelle van Keulen, Paul Lewis and Yovan Markovitch, as well as singers Ann Murray, Simon Keenlyside, Lisa Milne, Anne Sofie von Otter, Angelika Kirchschlager and Ian Bostridge. The Belcea Quartet has recorded exclusively for EMI Classics since 2001 and won the Gramophone Award for best Debut recording that year. Subsequent recordings for EMI include Schubert quartets (E-flat Major D87, Quartettsatz D703, A Minor D804 ‘Rosamunde’), Schubert’s ‘Trout’ Quintet with Thomas Adès and Corin Long, Brahms’s String Quartet Op. 51 No. 1 and String Quintet Op. 111 with Thomas Kakuska, Fauré’s La Bonne Chanson with Ian Bostridge, a double disc of Britten’s string quartets, Mozart’s ‘Dissonance’ and ‘Hoffmeister’ quartets, and, most recently, the complete Bartók quartets, for which the Quartet was named Chamber Music Ensemble of the Year by Germany's prestigious Echo Klassik Awards and nominated for a 2008 Gramophone Award. "The Belcea Quartet play with fire in their blood … their performances are never short of thrilling.” (The Scotsman) “The traditionally ceremonial key of C major takes on a different hue in Schubert's Quintet. …the playing is on the loftiest level, ensemble always transparently clean; and the ability to think, listen and prepare as a coordinated team results in an extraordinarily cogent performance sure in its grasp of phraseology, structure and dynamics. ...in the last 17 bars of the slow movement... absolute mastery over hushed tone, diaphanous texture and instrumental balance produces an awed stillness of time-stopping beauty. Here is technique fully subservient to emotional force not only in this movement, with its charged F minor middle section, but throughout the whole work. Throughout the other works too. ...Schubert's last quartet, in scope probably his greatest and most disquieting, ends in an Allegro assai finale where the Belceas underlines its message of discomfiture in a tour de force of icy intensity.” Gramophone Magazine, December 2009 “This is Schubert played with heart-stopping freshness, the composer as romantic rather than classicist...Superb.” The Observer, 29th November 2009 “The Belcea Quartet's performances of all three works are beautifully judged and technically polished. There's something refreshingly brisk and business-like about their approach...but nothing is pressed too hard, and the pacing always seems natural.” The Guardian, 29th November 2009 **** “The Belcea’s urgent reading of the quintet’s opening (quicker and spikier than usual) establishes instantly the music’s deeply ambiguous character... The players, while alive to its beauties and sublimities, have no time for the old fallacy about the supposed light-hearted mood of the finale, which ends — rightly — on a note of violent tension. The obsessive rhythms and harmonic disruptions of both quartets are also vividly caught.” Sunday Times, 22nd November 2009 **** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Gidon Kremer & Kremerata BalticaMozartwoche Salzburg 2002, Recorded live at the Mozarteum (Großer Saal)
Gidon Kremer (conductor & violin) & Marta Sudraba (cello) Kremerata Baltica Gidon Kremer is not only one of the leading violinists in the world, but also - thanks to his unquenchable curiosity and search for new impulses - one of the most fascinating musical personalities of our time. His repertoire ranges from Bach to the present, whereby a number of contemporary composers have achieved international recognition through his commitment. This DVD presents a very original programme with rarely performed pieces and Kremer's own version for string orchestra of the Schubert Quintet which makes it particularly attractive. Kremerata Baltica, a chamber orchestra, was created in 1997 by renowned violinist Gidon Kremer, who serves as the orchestra's artistic director and solo violinist.The high artistic quality of the ensemble is the result of the exceptional talent of the individual musicians and Kremer's innovative approach to repertoire. Kremerata Baltica is composed exclusively of talented young musicians (average age 27) from the Baltic States and is supported by the Ministries of Culture of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, making the group the de facto cultural ambassadors of the region. Kremerata Baltica won a Grammy Award in 2002, was nominated for another in 2003, records for Nonesuch Records (a Warner Bros. label) and Deutsche Grammophon, and it performs in all the great halls of the world. "Gidon Kremer…the great Latvian violinist and the brilliant chamber orchestra he has drawn from his own and neighbouring republics…performed with flair, intensity, precision and delicacy." The Independent “A brilliantly played concert, although the Schubert Quintet arrangement is disconcerting. It's good to see the enjoyment on the players' faces in the quirky Russian works, as well as the Rózsa and Piazzolla.” BBC Music Magazine, June 2009 **** | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Schubert - String Quintet & 'Quartettsatz'
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| |  | Schubert: String Quintet in C major, D956
“No doubt [Rostropovich’s] influence from the centre of the string texture contributes to the eloquence of the famous Adagio, which, like the performance as a whole, is strongly, even dramatically, characterized.” Penguin Guide | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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Gramophone Awards 2010