Beethoven: String Quartet No. 10 in E flat major, Op. 74 'Harp'

On Thursday, November 1st, 2012, after performing the entire corpus of Beethoven's String Quartets at the Pays de Fayence String Quartet Festival in the South of France, the Ysaÿe Quartet announced that it was bringing its thirty-year career to an end in January 2014.

The fourteen months ahead are to be devoted a major series of concerts, with a special emphasis on the music of Beethoven.

Founded in 1984 by a group of students at the Paris Conservatoire, the Quartet took its name from Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931), a violinist, chamber musician and composer whose influence is still felt today.

From the start and more especially after winning First Prize at the prestigious Evian String Quartet Competition in 1988, the Ysaÿe Quartet has stood at the pinnacle of the international chamber music scene, on a par with such legendary formations as the LaSalle and Amadeus Quartets that provided an inspiration for its work. It has brought an open-minded, committed and unfussy approach, characteristic of great playing, to a wide range of repertoires, from Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven to contemporary composers, who have often written specially for it. At the same time, teaching commitments have long been a central part of the Quartet's activities. In 1993, Miguel da Silva persuaded his colleagues to join him in setting up a specific String Quartet course at the Paris National Conservatoire (now the Paris Regional Conservatoire). This was a national first. Ysaÿe's students, both French (Psophos, Ebène, Modigliani, Voce, Hermès, Girard, Zaïde and Varèse) and international (Aviv of Israel, Incanto of Switzerland, Difference of Latvia) have won major awards around the world.

In mid-1987 the Amadeus Quartet (under the slightly differentiated name ‘Amadeus String Quartet’ to distinguish them from their Deutsche Grammophon recordings) went into the studio to begin a projected cycle of the complete Beethoven quartets. In the event, they are the last recordings ever to be made by the Quartet, for the death of Peter Schidlof resulted in the Quartet disbanding – and the end of a truly remarkable era of music-making. These ‘middle period’ quartets of Beethoven – two of his most popular – were recorded at a venue often used by Decca, the Church of St. Barnabas in London and the sound engineering is more homogenous, less first-violin centric.

The Tokyo String Quartet continues its complete Beethoven cycle with this third volume. Both the graceful Op. 74, nicknamed 'Harp' for its use of pizzicato, and Op.95, with its quest for the essential, testify to the new maturity achieved by the composer around 1810. The Tokyo String Quartet has captivated audiences and critics alike since it was founded more than 30 years ago. Regarded as one of the supreme chamber ensembles of the world, the Tokyo Quartet has collaborated with a remarkable array of artists and composers, built a comprehensive catalogue of critically acclaimed recordings and established a distinguished teaching record. Performing well over a hundred concerts worldwide each season, the Tokyo String Quartet has a devoted international following that includes not only the major capitals of the world but also reaches all four corners, from Australia to Estonia to Scandinavia and the Far East.

For the Atrium Quartet, to couple Beethoven and Shostakovich seemed self-evident: in the realm of the string quartet, these composers dominated their respective eras, and both made an indelible mark on the history of the genre. They left a number of works with similar features; both men juxtapose strongly contrasted moods, shifting rapidly from violence to meditative inwardness, from insouciance to melancholy.

‘Moreover, it is well known that thirteen of Shostakovich’s fifteen quartets were premiered by the Beethoven Quartet, founded in Moscow in 1923. This formation had made a name for itself by performing the complete cycle of Beethoven quartets in 1927, for the commemoration of the centenary of the composer’s death. Because of the demise of its cellist, Sergey Shirinsky, it was unable to give the premiere of Shostakovich’s String Quartet no.15, which was entrusted to the Taneyev Quartet – whose cellist Joseph Levinson subsequently became the mentor of the Atrium Quartet. So, a Beethoven-Shostakovich coupling? Self-evident, no doubt about it. ’ Hélène Cao

The ATRIUM STRING QUARTET is the first Quartet from Russia which has won the two most important International Competitions for String Quartets. They first rose to international prominence in April 2003 when they won the First Prize and the Audience Prize in the London International String Quartet Competition which was held at the prestigious Wigmore Hall, when they made their debut on BBC Radio 3 with a performance of the Fifth String Quartet of Shostakovich.

The 44-year-old history of the Tokyo String Quartet, one of the best quartets in the world, comes to an end in June, 2013. The Quartet has decided that due to the retirement of two of its members, the entire ensemble would disband after 44 successful years. A certain sense of nostalgia definitely appears when hearing the music on this recording.

With an internationally acclaimed debut CD under their belts in 2008, the Engegård Quartet have brought together possibly two of the main figures in the world of the string quartet and introduced one of Norway’s greatest living composers – Arne Nordheim with his 1956 string quartet. A chamber release to savour.