With their expressive timbre and the technical excellence of the recording, the Auryn Quartet need not fear the competition, even though there is already a multitude of recordings in existence. (Hartmut Luck, Klassik-heute) There is no shortage of great and famous Beethoven Cycles, but there are no performances such as these. For me, this is now the set to beat. (Laurence Vittes)

The incubation period is a mere thirty seconds: that is how long the symphonic first spark takes to ignite, with the four musicians dragging the child empress out of silence at the beginning of the first Razumovsky Quartet and again and again projecting their Auryn sparkle into us. And once again we are hooked. (Wiesbadener Anzeiger) There is no shortage of great and famous Beethoven Cycles, but there are no performances such as these. For me, this is now the set to beat. (Laurence Vittes)

The Auryn Quartet have been working with TACET for years now. And those of you who are in the know will appreciate what that means:... The challenges for a quartet formation from playing Beethoven's works mean picking up the tensions in the score and hanging on to them. The Auryn Quartet is not only equal to this task: they really seem to gain strength and fun from this field of tension. To be able to play at this level, the musicians constantly have to redefine the boundaries between respect for the other players and healthy self-interest. Playing in a quartet seems to have become a life elixir for the four Auryns: For twenty-three years now they have been rising to greater and greater heights. With the Quartets op. 18 by Beethoven they have definitely reached a peak. We await eagerly the promised continuation of their complete collection of Beethoven's Quartets. (WDR Herzeichen) There is no shortage of great and famous Beethoven Cycles, but there are no performances such as these. For me, this is now the set to beat. (Laurence Vittes)

BEETHOVEN: String Quartets Op. 18, Nos. 1 and 2

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

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BEETHOVEN String Quartets: Nos. 8 and 9, “Razumovsky” • Qrt Italiano • PENTATONE 5186 176 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 70:27)


PentaTone has a history of cherry-picking items from old quad Philips cycles without reissuing every recording in the original series (possibly, in some cases, because the whole series was not recorded quadraphonically). So it’s heartening to see that the label has at least brought out the Italiano Quartet’s full traversal of Beethoven’s “Razumovsky” quartets. An earlier disc, which I reviewed in Fanfare 32:5, coupled op. 59/1 with the last of Beethoven’s op. 18 works. What I wrote about that release holds true for this one: “The readings are poised and flowing, sensitive to a variety of articulation, attacks, and details of dynamics, but not as hyperdramatic as many more recent efforts. Without underplaying the scores, Quartetto Italiano provides interpretations that should be very appealing to listeners who find even the finest contemporary efforts (Emerson, Prazák) to be excessively intense and nervous.” With flexible phrasing, lucid voicings (listen to the clarity of the lines in the finale of op. 59/2), and unfailing warmth (hear the full tone and weight of that Quartet’s Allegretto, offset by crisp attacks), these polished, incisive performances remain attractive more than 35 years after they were recorded. This four-channel reissue presents the musicians on a wide stage from close perspective. Dare we hope that PentaTone will at least complete the Italiano’s middle-quartet series, even if not committing to the entire cycle?


FANFARE: James Reel

Celebrate with Delos International 20 wonderful years of music-making with the Shanghai Quartet! This outstanding Quartet was called by the Strad 'a foursome of uncommon refinement and musical distinction.' This versatile group brings the delicacy of Eastern music to Western repertoire with passionate musicality and astonishing technique.

Classical Music

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Beethoven’s String Quartets are the undisputed sine qua non of the string quartet genre, with all other works in this form, as well as the ensembles themselves who must inevitably perform and record them, measured against this body of work and its associated recordings. The Philharmonia Quartet of Berlin, four members of the BPO, has been termed a "top-flight-ensemble" by the Chicago Tribune, possessing “a heart melting sound” (Boston Globe). An ensemble of thirty years standing, the PQB has established itself as a highly regarded, standard-setting body, and one in great demand worldwide.

Classical Music

Collectors familiar with Trudelies Leonhardt’s previous Beethoven releases on the Globe and Meridian labels will know what to expect here. As before, she uses a Viennese Benignus Seidner model fortepiano dating from 1815. Its low notes have a warm, slightly nasal timbre, with an attractive singing quality to the middle and high registers that contrasts to the jangly sonorities we sometimes hear from other instruments from that period, such as the Graf fortepiano. Leonhardt’s genial performing style evokes the intimacy and spontaneous inflections typical of Wilhelm Kempff and Wilhelm Backhaus in their later years.

She takes the two Op. 49 sonatas’ modest dimensions on their own terms, projecting the melodies in natural, conversational arcs. Leonhardt’s tempo for the G major Op. 14 No. 1 first movement is more of a Moderato than the Allegro that Beethoven specifies, and we might wish for more rhythmic backbone in the development section, or a brusquer attack to the Andante’s soft staccato chords. By contrast, Leonhardt brings out the Allegro assai finale’s sense of surprise in her sophisticated timing of the ascending scales and rests.

Also note the uncommonly clear left-hand passagework in Leonhardt’s expansive and well-proportioned Op. 110 sonata opening movement. Her little luftpauses at phrase ends disrupt the rhythmic flow of the Allegro molto movement’s main theme. The expressive eloquence informing the third movement’s ”Klagender Gesang” best illustrates Leonhardt’s seasoned musicianship, although she doesn’t match Peter Serkin and Ronald Brautigam for virtuosic momentum in the fugue’s climax. The booklet includes an extensive essay about the Seidner fortepiano and excellent musical annotations.

-- Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Penelope Crawford presents a program of four of Beethoven's most important transitional sonatas, bridging the gap between his "middle" and "late" periods. Composed against the backdrop of Napoleonic Europe and Metternich's Congress of Vienna, these four works chart Beethoven's growth as a composer in a rapidly changing world. As with her first Beethoven sonata recording (opp. 109-11), Musica Omnia MO 0308), a splendid fortepiano by the great Viennese builder, Conrad Graf, is used here, similar to one of the last pianos owned by Beethoven, also by Conrad Graf.

Performing and recording Beethoven’s complete sonatas for violin and piano has been a dream of Elizabeth Wallfisch and David Breitman for years. This is the ensemble’s second volume in their endeavor, wrapping up the project with Sonatas No. 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. It is rare that these pieces are performed on historical instruments, largely due to obstacles in performing live. These works, however, are beautifully performed her on period instruments, just the way Beethoven heard them. Elizabeth Wallfisch is a concertmaster, music director, and respected interpreter of 17th, 18th, and 19th century violin music. Her extensive discography includes a wide array of pieces, from Early Baroque, to Classical violinist-composers. David Breitman performs frequently alongside soloists and in chamber ensembles. He also recently recorded Beethoven’s cello sonatas with Jaap ted Linden.

Classical Music

BEETHOVEN Septet in E?. Sextet in E? • Consortium Classicum • MDG 3010594 (60:02)


Of the two works on this disc, the Septet for clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello, and double bass, has gained a firm foothold in the repertoire with some 40 recordings currently listed. Begun in 1799, it’s an early work, as indeed are all of Beethoven’s works for winds alone or for winds with strings, despite some misleadingly high opus numbers resulting from later publication dates.


Less often recorded, and a bit of an oddity in the composer’s catalog, is the Sextet for two horns and string quartet, op. 81b. Like the Septet, it too was written in the mid 1790s. Though it shares a common opus number with the much later-composed “Les Adieux” Piano Sonata, op. 81a, the two works are not related.


Beethoven never wrote anything like the Sextet again, but the real puzzle of the piece lies in how to classify it. Divertimento-type works scored for two horns and a string quartet were not uncommon in the latter part of the 18th century, and both Haydn and Mozart wrote for this complement of instruments. But it’s in the way Beethoven writes for the horns that makes the Sextet so unusual. It’s almost as if he conceived the piece as a chamber concerto for two horns with the accompaniment reduced to the four essential supporting string voices, not entirely unlike Mozart’s downsizing of some of his early piano concertos for performance à quattro —by a string quartet accompanying the solo piano.


In the Sextet, the horns are the stars of the show, with brilliant fanfares and lots of technically challenging busywork, while the four strings are relegated to a subsidiary role, coming to the fore only long enough for the horn players to catch their breath. The piece is also in three movements (fast-slow-fast), rather than the more common multimovement wind and mixed wind-and-strings chamber works of the period, further reinforcing the chamber concerto notion.


Whatever the Sextet is or Beethoven intended it to be, it’s an interesting experiment from the composer’s early curiosity shop but not a memorable masterpiece. Not so the Septet, which is surely one of Beethoven’s most expansive and important early works. Its exceptional popularity in the composer’s own lifetime, overshadowing later works he considered superior, is reported to have caused him considerable annoyance. Nonetheless, with an eye on the cash register, in 1803 or thereabouts he arranged the op. 20 Septet for clarinet (or violin), cello, and piano, and published it as op. 38. This is not the same piece as another trio Beethoven wrote in B?-Major for this same combination of instruments, nicknamed the “Gassenhauer” Trio, op. 11, which is often included in its violin version as No. 4 of the composer’s standard canon of piano trios.


Founded by clarinetist Dieter Klöcker in the early 1960s, Consortium Classicum has distinguished itself as one of the world’s leading chamber ensembles, acclaimed especially for its performances of 18th- and 19th-century repertoire for winds. But as is clear from these performances recorded in 1994, string players are no strangers to the group. Why this MDG CD has only now arrived for review I can’t say for sure, but I suspect it has been available abroad for many years and is just now being distributed here in the U.S. But the Consortium has recorded the Septet and Sextet more than once, and this is not the same 1974 pairing of these works on a cpo CD reviewed by Richard A. Kaplan in Fanfare 30: 5.


The Consortium’s execution is clean and sharply focused and the recording, as is customary for MDG, is brightly lit and very well balanced, clearly delineating each instrument. I find this to be a most enjoyable and recommendable CD. Still, if this particular coupling appeals to you, I wouldn’t want to suggest that the Consortium Classicum is preferable to two other very fine identically programmed discs, one with the Gaudier Ensemble, now on Hyperion’s mid-priced Helios label, and the other with the estimable Nash Ensemble on the unfortunately not so inexpensively priced ASV Gold label. In both cases, I find the playing a bit more spirited and perhaps more spontaneous than I do the Consortium Classicum’s performances. But the Septet, despite Beethoven’s dismay at its popularity, is popular for good reason and well worth having in more than one version. So, recommended.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins