Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Op.7: 1. Nicht zu rasch
2. String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Op.7: 2. Kräftig (Nicht zu rasch)
3. String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Op.7: 3. Mäßig (Langsame Viertel)
4. String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Op.7: 4. Mäßig (Heiter)
5. String Quartet No. 2, Op.10: 1. Mäßig
6. String Quartet No. 2, Op.10: 2. Sehr rasch
7. String Quartet No. 2, Op.10: 3. Litanei (Langsam)
8. String Quartet No. 2, Op.10: 4. Entrückung (Sehr Lagsam)

Disc 2:

1. String Quartet No. 3, Op.30: Moderato
2. String Quartet No. 3, Op.30: Adagio
3. String Quartet No. 3, Op.30: Intermezzo
4. String Quartet No. 3, Op.30: Rondo
5. String Quartet No.4, Op.37: Allegro Molto
6. String Quartet No.4, Op.37: Comodo
7. String Quartet No.4, Op.37: Largo
8. String Quartet No.4, Op.37: Allegro

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5719 in Music
• Released on: 2000-01-11
• Number of discs: 2

Customer Reviews

3 1/2 good string quartet recordings
This is generally a fine recording. I enjoy the recording of the 3rd quartet particularly. First movement is more leisurely than the LaSalle Quartet's recording but otherwise just fine.

But what a horrible crime the engineers have committed in the 2nd Quartet! The last two movements can be agonizingly beautiful. Not here. When the soprano makes her entrance, they hush the quartet -- as if they had dropped a cloth over it. Then when her part is finished (measure 116 of the fourth movement), up comes the cloth and the full sound of the strings is restored (mm 117-156). Same thing happens in the 3rd movement. Was this in Evelyn Lear's contract? It certainly turns a lot of good music to fuzz.

Happily there are a number of recordings of the 2nd all by itself. (You can even have the string orchestra performance by I Musici de Montreal on Chandos.) So if you need recordings of the less recorded 3rd and 4th, this might be a fine choice.

Wonderful rendition of some sadly underplayed masterpieces
Schoenberg's quartets are a good survey of his development as a composer. The early two quartets are tonal and late-romantic in style. They are accessible, full of pathos and contrapuntally dense. The last two quartets are in the full twelve-tone style of Schoenberg's mature period. These are also wonderful, but in a very different way. Full of interesting shapes and colors, like a Kandinsky painting. The performances here are top-notch, and render this potentially difficult music with great naturalness and feeling. Difficult listening, but very rewarding.

A Revolutionary in Method, a Conservative in Tone
Although Schoenberg developed a revolutionary new method of organizing pitch, what is often overlooked is that serialism is just exactly that: a method of organizing pitch, and not a style per se. A variety of styles can be accomodated by this method. Folks who are a little gun-shy of serialism (or its aesthetic shadow) are sometimes caught up short when they actually listen to Schoenberg's music. For the fact is, all through his journey of exploring how pitch should be organized in a composition, which made him something of a revolutionary, stylistically he was always post-Romantic in temperament - which, ironically, made him something of a dinosaur to serial idealogues in the 1950s, such as Pierre Boulez.

In a way which invites comparison to Bartók's six, Schoenberg's four quartets span his career. The striking thing, perhaps, is how unified they are in "voice," despite the composer's epochal adventures in How to Organize Pitch. These pieces are seldom performed by string quartets in the states, and it is difficult to see why, since in many respects, they are no harder on the ears than the Bartók quartets, which enjoy a solid berth in chamber recitals.

The first movement of the third quartet plays itself out in a very scherzando vein; it may even strike some as strangely cheerful in activity, considering its acerbic chromaticism.

The third movement of the fourth quartet is, simply, beautiful. If anyone wonders if Schoenberg was capable of writing beautiful music, this Largo is quite possibly the strongest case pro.

There is a restlessness to the music, it is always surging ... somewhere. So I am not sure that it can be my favorite music in the world; but it is well made, perfectly suited to the medium of the string quartet, and there are often passages of beauty which startle with their strangeness.