Beethoven: String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Op. 135

In its 2012/13 season, the Hagen Quartett brings the complete Beethoven string quartets to the most prominent musical centres of the world, including New York, Tokyo, Paris, London, Vienna and Salzburg. During the first half of this tour, the quartet went right away from the stage to the studio to record three of their most favourite Beethoven quartets. With Op. 18/3 and Op. 135, the album ranges from the very first to the last string quartet Ludwig van Beethoven wrote.

The Hagen Quartet came into being in 1981, soon achieving success in a number of competitions and signing an exclusive recording contract with DG, which over the course of a 20-year relationship produced 45 CDs. Through its long engagement with the inexhaustibly rich quartet repertoire, the Hagen Quartet has developed and retained a distinctive character, not least in its collaboration with such musicians as Nikolaus Harnoncourt, György Kurtág, Maurizio Pollini, Mitsuko Uchida, Krystian Zimerman, Heinrich Schiff and Jörg Widmann.

In 2011 the Hagen Quartet celebrated its 30th anniversary, which was also the start of a new collaboration with the record label Myrios Classics. For the debut album Hagen Quartett 30 (MYR006), the ensemble was awarded the prestigious German ECHO Klassik award in the category Ensemble of the Year 2011.

Founded in 1992, the Brentano String Quartet of New York is particularly recognized for its interpretations combining perfect technique with peerless musicality: a Class A ensemble. Their previous volume, devoted to Beethoven's late quartets (named 'Editor’s Choice' by Gramophone magazine), served as the soundtrack for Yaron Zilberman's film A Late Quartet, which brings together a galaxy of stars including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener and Christopher Walken… Benefiting from this first success, our musicians are now continuing the undertaking with the Op. 135 and 132.

A pure crystal of intelligence and brilliance that will doubtless mark a milestone. USA premiere of the film ‘A LATE QUARTET’ on November 2nd 2012. « Perhaps this is the greatest gift that Beethoven has given us. He grapples with the vicissitudes of our inner and outer lives, in full acknowledgement of our native suffering, and through the transformative power of art leads us to recognition of beauty and faith in humanity. »

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.

One of America’s finest chamber groups, the Jupiter String Quartet, performs two major works from the first half of the 19th century, Felix Mendelssohn’s stormy last String Quartet in F minor op. 80, and Beethoven’s final work, the Quartet in F major op. 135.

The Jupiter Quartet have received many major chamber music awards since it was formed in 2001, including First prize in the Banff International String Quartet Competition, Grand prize in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, and Chamber Music America’s Cleveland Quartet Award. Most recently they were honoured with an Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Although Felix Mendelssohn lived a relatively happy life, in his String Quartet No. 6 in F minor op. 80 we discover the flip-side of his normally sunny personality. It was written in 1847 soon after the death of his beloved sister Fanny, and is essentially his last major composition (he died only two months after its completion). The music is powerful, turbulent, and highly charged with emotion.

Beethoven’s last String Quartet in F major opus 135 was written on a smaller scale than his other late quartets. Although his psychological struggles are widely documented, his final work is full of delightful capriciousness and joy.

With this release of two early quartets and his last completed quartet, the Artemis Quartet rounds off its Beethoven cycle for Virgin Classics. “His music speaks to every era,” they say, “It is a perfect dialogue between tradition and modernity, and between intellectual refinement and raw emotion,”

Beethoven’s extraordinary musical evolution is traced in the cycle, which remains the touchstone of the quartet repertoire. The Artemis’ passionate engagement with the composer’s music was summarised by Die Zeit: “An ensemble that, when compared to groups on a similar level of perfection, seems to approach the repertoire from another horizon. Many quartets convey an air in their playing of rarefied workmanship and detached refinement from the world. They explore the music within the notes. The members of the Artemis come as people who live life, and life is what they seek in Beethoven too.”

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.

During the past ten years the Quartetto di Cremona has matured into a string quartet of international renown, combining the Italian culture of string playing with an awareness of historical performance practice.

Having for many years performed at the great international halls, it is often regarded as the successor to the famous Quartetto Italiano. The musical style of the Quartetto di Cremona is marked by a fruitful tension between Italian and

German-Austrian influences: Following their academic studies the players continued their training with Piero Farulli of the Quartetto Italiano. He strongly favoured intuitive playing and a fervent, emotional, romantic and 'Italian' approach to music. Afterwards the musicians pursued their studies with Hatto Beyerle of the Alban Berg Quartet who represents a clear, classical, 'Austro-German' style, focusing on faithfulness to the original, form and structure as a basis for musical interpretation and inspiration. Both teachers have left a lasting impression on the quartet and significantly influenced its musical style. The players naturally unite both poles, combining boisterous enthusiasm with a distinct sense for musical architecture, cultivating the fusion of structure and xpression, external shape and internal passion.

With the three works contained in Volume 1, the Quartetto di Cremona covers the most important periods of Beethoven’s quartet oeuvre. The final of the six Op. 18 Quartets features a mysteriously programmatic dimension in its last

movement, “La Malinconia”, whereas Op. 95 from Beethoven’s middle period is both highly compact yet dramatically gripping. The disc closes with Beethoven’s final Quartet, Op. 135, completed in Vienna one year before his death: it differs from his less easily approachable late works in taking on a conciliatory stance.

The two masterful quartets by Schubert and Beethoven on this disc were composed in the same year, 1826. They are performed here by the superb New Orford String Quartet. Through its many tours and recordings both at home and abroad, the Orford String Quartet became one of Canada's best-known and most illustrious musical ensembles. After 26 years and more than 2000 concerts on six continents, the Quartet disbanded, giving its last concert on July 28, 1991. In July 2009 the New Orford String Quartet arose from the fame and tradition of its glorious predecessor, giving its first concert for a sold-out audience at the Orford Arts Centre. This disc marks the New Orford's debut recording.