The Leonkoro Quartet, founded in 2019 and winner of multiple prestigious awards in 2022 - nine prizes at the Wigmore Hall International Competition, including first prize, BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists, Jurgen Ponto Foundation Music Prize, first prize at the Bordeaux Competition - joins Alpha Classics for several recordings. First stop: Vienna and it's influence on the musical landscape of the early 20th century. Berg completed his Suite lyrique on 5 October 1926: combining theatricality and rigorous architecture, free atonality and dodecaphonism, this suite expresses the composer's passionate love for Hanna Fuchs at that time. Erwin Schulhoff, born in Prague in 1894, was discovered by Dvorak and studied in Vienna from the age of 12; he dedicated his Five Pieces to Darius Milhaud, as he also studied in Paris with Debussy around 1913, ultimately dying in a prison camp in Bavaria in 1942. In his Opus 5, described by Glenn Gould as 'sensual' expressionism, Webern mourns the death of his mother on 7 September 1906.

After falling in love with the quartets of Britten and Bartók, we developed a long-standing desire to record these masterpieces. For our debut CD Longing we chose their first quartets, as well as Webern's first string quartet work Langsamer Satz. All three remarkable works resonate with a profound and unmistakable sense of longing. We felt a sense of kinship with these composers as they, like us, were still discovering their distinct style and identity when creating these works. In Langsamer Satz, Webern beautifully showcases the height of longing for love in the romantic 19th century. Bartók continues this romantic idiom and goes on to develop the new sounds of the early 20th century, a period from which we draw so much of our own passions. Finally, Britten continues to explore the sound and identity of the 20th century in his own distinctive colour palette. These works not only keep us on the edge of our seats, but also express a beautiful longing, one which we recognize in ourselves, and one we want to share with our listeners.

Pierre Dumoussaud conducts a 'dream orchestra' comprised of chamber music players, regulars at Deauville's Easter Festival (Festival de Paques) in an unusual two-part work by Schonberg: the two "chamber symphonies," scores which are as teeming with detail as they are moving, attesting to the composer's soul-searching and experiences at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. In a string orchestra version, Langsamer Satz by Anton Webern, a student of Schonberg, adds all it's romantic fervour as a counterpoint.