Track Listing

1. No. 1, Heftig bewegt
2. No. 2, Sehr langsam
3. No. 3, Sehr bewegt
4. No. 4, Sehr langsam
5. No. 5, In zarter Bewegung
6. No. 1, Massig
7. No. 2, Leicht bewegt
8. No. 3, Ziemlich fliessend
9. No. 4, Sehr langsam
10. No. 5, Ausserst langsam
11. No. 6, Fliessend
12. I M�big, Op 09 No 01
13. II Schmerz, immer blick nach oben
14. III Flie�end, Op 09 No 06
15. Sehr Langsam
16. Sehr Getragen Und Ausdrucksvoll
17. M�ssig
18. Gem�chlich
19. Sehr fliessend

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #179404 in Music
• Released on: 1995-05-16
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.com essential recording
Opening with the longest single movement Anton Webern ever composed, this collection of his nine works for string quartet and trio covers his entire career. For starters, it bears reminding that the first, longest movement he wrote encompasses a mere nine minutes--glorious minutes, but only nine of them. They make up the 1905 string quartet, taken abundantly through its most sonorous dialogues by the Emerson String Quartet, who provide a lavish setting in Lawrence Dutton's viola for the crucial middle ground between David Finckel's robust cello and the sometimes jarred, sometimes whizzing violins of Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer. Beyond the first string quartet, there are loads of vantages here from which to examine postserial music. For while Webern owed much to Schoenberg's revolution, he owed even more to an inherently economic sense of wholeness. These are miniatures, really, each cutting rapidly to the quick of the matter and finding sometimes abrupt completion. It's perfect music for an era when the tension between experimentation and economy of phrasing urges on creative motion. And here it's perfectly played: tense, sad, sweet, and urgent. --Andrew Bartlett

Customer Reviews

economical emotional expression.
Few things excite me like modernist chamber music, but Webern's works for string quartet have never really grabbed me. How disappointing! Or so I thought. Today I spent several hours listening through these pieces chronologically. Now it all makes sense: The longer pieces, all the earliest Webern wrote (the slow movement, the string quartet, and the rondo), are pleasant and unambitious. They all carry with them the influence of Webern's teacher, Arnold Schoenberg. These early pieces lack much in the way of identity and compositional rigor, as they seem to be more in the business of evoking _Verlarkte nacht_ and Schoenberg's first quartet than anything Webern-esque!

After these early works, things get interesting -- and the only real `problem' is that Webern's compositions are so short that if your attention wanders for even a second you'll have missed a pivotal moment in the piece! Therein lies the challenge of "getting" the music. Webern's music is carried out with introverted efficiency so, as a listener, you must be very committed with your attention. The first piece to explore the alien world of atonality is _five movements for string quartet_, which lasts only eight or nine minutes. Its colorful gestures, like percussive effect by striking with the wood of the bow and progressive intervals, invite one into the exciting soundworld of artists setting out for the world of atonality, which is limited only by one's imagination.

Webern's imagination blooms with great-yet-compact results, as he writes pieces even shorter than the _five movements_. Yet here, in a brief phase before he adopted Schoenberg's serialist method, he preserves affecting power of expression in pieces whose movements are virtually never longer than a minute. The _six bagatelles_ and _three pieces_, expressing loss and sadness, are painful to listen to. They are, it seems, "pieces" in a more denotative sense of the term -- fragments of painful emotion, rendered with articulate and unconventional language and technique. (the song-piece, the second part of the _three pieces_, is performed by mezzo-soprano Mary Ann-McCormick with exquisite pain).

Three pieces for string trio and quartet emerge with the advent of serialism. These are remarkable pieces -- again, short but precious. Be it the angular, swirling motions a surprising melodicism of op.20, or the perfect, careful conception of op.28, with its deep lyrical beauty scattered across the different instruments with prudent economy and emotional sensitivity, Webern's late serialist chamber works are some of the finest to be offered.

Webern's string music is epic in its emotional dimension, not its size and scope. Within these short pieces are systems of necessity, pure and without artificial extension. I can't believe it took me so long to appreciate them.

Quite good
If you like Webern, these are simply indespensible--and you probably know that already and are wasting your time reading reviews that would better be spent buying them. If you don't know whether you like Webern, be warned that this isn't music for the faint-hearted. It's musically very dense and concentrated, yet sonorally very sparse, requiring the constant attention of the listener. Nonetheless, it is immensely expressive and harmonically very beautiful. To most, nonetheless, it sounds like Psycho-music, as even Webern fans must concede. Many items on this disc are some of Dr. Webern's most accessible, but highly expressionist nonetheless. As for the performances, they are astounding. The bagatelles are played with a tad bit more precision by Kronos (Winter was Hard), but not with the warmth, sonority, and energy with which Emerson plays them. All in all, I prefer this rendition.

the Emerson Quartet's Webern is a man with a plan
I have had this set of Webern's string quartets and trios by the Emerson Quartet (EQ) on the shelf for years, and have seldom been motivated to listen to it. I finally found an alternative that I feel is much better by the Schoenberg Quartet (Webern: Chamber Music for Strings) -- see my review). In comparing the two, the EQ takes the tempos faster -- no surprise! -- and this has the effect of making it sound as if there is a clear plan to get from point A to point B: "we don't know where we're going, but we're going to get there briskly and efficiently." Whether it's the technique or the DG recording or both, the sound of this disc is airless and cramped, a bit inhuman.

You might conclude that this was Webern's intent, until you hear the Schoenberg Quartet! Their Webern, by contrast, is a seeker, and you are invited to join him, and the performers, in wondering just what we've gotten ourselves into, and trying to figure it all out. The sound is warm and spacious, and their tempos are slower than the EQ, but not quite as slow as the Juilliard Quartet, whose late-'60s recordings are included in the Sony box (WEBERN: COMPLETE WORKS (Op. 1-31) with Boulez conducting -- see my review), which makes it all sound tragic. These EQ recordings, by the way, from 1992-1994, are included in the 2000 DG box, COMPLETE WEBERN, also with Boulez conducting the orchestral works.

If you were going to choose only one recording, then, my strong recommendation is the Schoenberg Quartet on Chandos. However, the EQ and SQ discs are not strictly speaking the same -- they mainly include the same works but with the following exceptions: the EQ plays the "Movement for String Trio," a posthumously published work from 1925, and the "Three Pieces for String Quartet" with soprano from 1913, while the SQ omits these and plays instead "Four Pieces" (Op. 7) for violin and piano from 1910-1914, the "Sonata" (Op. post) for cello and piano of 1914, and "Three Little Pieces" (Op. 11) for cello and piano, also of 1914.