MENDELSSOHN + SCHUMANN

Classical Music

These fabled works dating from 1960–1975 represent some of Shostakovich’s most bitterly frank, occasionally transcendental essays for the string quartet. At times poignant yet occasionally ribald, these performances have been called utterly compelling. Unique in this stunning survey is a fine performance of his “Unfinished” quartet, the first recording of what was originally to have been Shostakovich’s 9th Quartet, discovered and published in 2003. Additionally, listeners will find two more of Zakarias Grafilo’s extraordinary transcriptions of the 1950/51 Preludes and Fugues for Piano Op. 87.

Alexander String Quartet:
Zakarias Grafilo, Frederick Lifsitz: violins
Paul Yarbrough: viola
Sandy Wilson: cello

Immaculate professionalism … huge and telling ensemble experience, instrumental mastery practically faultless … Classical elegance and textural clarity.

This triple-CD set was originally published in 2004, but has recently been reissued, presumably to coincide with the Alexander String Quartet's newest CD, a not altogether inspiring collection of not altogether inspired arrangements of music by George Gerswhin and Jerome Kern.
 
The ASQ cannot go wrong with Mozart, though, and they do not. This is Mozart arguably at his finest in six works of sparkling imagination, style and technique, inspired by the six Quartets op.33 with which Haydn had recently opened new musical doors. Three years separate the first and last, an indication that Mozart spent a for him unusually long time working on them, a fact he confirmed in his dedication to Haydn when they were published in 1785.
 
In the last few years the ASQ have made many recordings for Foghorn Classics - to date there have been some 15 releases, including several double- or triple-discs. Their most important recordings have been the complete Quartets both of Beethoven, twice - with the current line-up for Foghorn on CD-2005 and with three-quarters the same ensemble in the Nineties for Arte Nova Classics - and of Shostakovich, on Foghorn again (CD-1988, CD-1991). Needless to say, each cycle met with considerable acclaim.
 
Individually, Mozart's 'Haydn' Quartets have been recorded countless times by every string quartet worth its salt. More importantly, there have also been numerous cycles of the six together, with or without additional works, and some of these are indisputably better deals than this Foghorn, which is dear by any standards - the equivalent, in fact, of three full-price singles. To cite merely top-rankers: the Alban Berg Quartet (7 CDs, EMI 5855812; alternatively, 4 CDs on Teldec 995495), the Emerson Quartet (3 CDs, DG 431797), the Melos Quartet (3 CDs, DG 415870), the Hagen Quartet (3 CDs, DG 471024 or 7 CDs, DG 000649302), the Quatuor Ysaÿe (3 CDs, Decca 473963), the Amadeus Quartet (6 CDs, DG 001408002), the Talich Quartet (7 CDs, La Dolce Vita 100), the Chilingirian Quartet (5 CDs, CRD 5005), the Franz Schubert Quartet (5 CDs, Nimbus NI1778) and the Guarneri Quartet newly reissued on RCA (6 CDs, 1918042). A few of these boxed sets are available at half the Foghorn price or less. On the other hand, the Takács Quartet on Hungaroton (HCD 12983-85) play only the 'Haydn' Quartets at a price that is more eye-watering still than Foghorn's, and for all its brilliance, the Quartetto Italiano boxed set (8 CDs, Philips 416419) will likely be out of most mortals' price range.
 
Financial differentials aside, all the readings above have their own many strong points, with perceived weaknesses often coming down to aesthetics. The ASQ - who last year celebrated their 30th anniversary - are hard to fault in any regard: their professionalism is immaculate, their ensemble experience huge and telling, their instrument mastery practically faultless. They exhibit a Classical elegance and textural clarity that Haydn would surely have approved of. For those not on a budget, this is a safe purchase that will repay the outlay with hours of repeated pleasure.
 
Sound quality is very good indeed, as it invariably is at the AAAL: intimate, yet spacious, with all four instruments beautifully defined. The accompanying booklet is excellent - notes by Eric Bromberger provide just the right amount of detail for everyman and expert alike, though in English only.
 
Rather wantonly, each CD ends with a literal foghorn. These are thankfully on separate tracks!
 
-- Byzantion, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

The award-winning Alexander String Quartet joins with acclaimed mezzo soprano Kindra Scharich in this world premiere recording of some of Mahler’s great orchestral Lieder — transcribed for voice and string quartet by Zakarias Grafilo. Commissioned by Lieder Alive! these exquisite transcriptions combine the lushness of the orchestral versions with the intimacy of chamber music — and the result is transcendent. Kindra Scharich has performed more than 50 art songs in 10 languages and sung over 30 roles in the lyric mezzo opera repertoire. Recording projects include Beethoven, Schumann and the complete non-Portuguese song repertoire of the great Brazilian composer Alberto Nepomuceno. A dedicated recitalist with a deep love of chamber music, she has performed and premiered numerous works by living composers. The Alexander String Quartet’s discography includes major cycles by Bartok, Kodaly, Mozart, Shostakovich, and Beethoven. An important advocate of new music, with over 35 commissions and premieres, they have performed on five continents. Directors of the Instructional Program of the Morrison Chamber Music Center at San Francisco State University, ASQ is the subject of an award-winning documentary “Con Moto: The Alexander String Quartet.”

With their latest release of “Locale” from Foghorn Classics, the Alexander String Quartet presents brand new accounts of two of Antonín Dvorák’s most enduringly popular chamber works. The “American” String Quartet in F Major, Op. 96 from 1893 was written during the composer’s extended retreat from New York City to the rural “Czech” community of Spillville, on the Turkey River in northeastern Iowa. The ASQ plumbs the rich and reflective “outdoor” nuances of this exquisitely crafted master­piece. And the miraculous pianist Joyce Yang joins the Alexanders once again for this recording of the jubilant Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81 from 1887, composed at the composer’s country home amidst Bohemia’s woods and fields in Vysoka, just a little south of Prague. These two works are among the composer’s most expressively articulate chamber works. Both are profoundly influenced by their geographic “locale” and are, perhaps, exemplars of the sophisticated duality of the transatlantic experience of the late 19th century, embracing the nostalgia of the traditional bucolic ideal and the urbane sophistication of the imminent new age. Eric Bromberger’s accompanying notes and commentary provide illuminating musical and historical context, not least some of Dvorak’s own thoughts on the American-ness of his quartet. This is the third release on Foghorn Classics celebrating the inimitable collaboration between the Alexanders and Yang. Earlier releases in­­clude the Brahms and Schumann Quintets and, most recently, the Mozart Piano Quartets. Their combined concert repertoire, among several other standard and modern works, now includes a brilliant new and much-lauded quintet from the American composer Samuel Carl Adams, commissioned to help celebrate a decade of joyful collaborative music-making.

Maintaining focus on Mozart’s last years, members of the Alexander String Quartet join with electrifying and much-lauded pianist Joyce Yang on this recording of the two piano quartets. This is the second of a three-volume set which will include many of Mozart’s great chamber works from that period. Eric Bromberger’s liner notes contextualize these works within the canon: “Some have claimed that Mozart invented the piano quartet, but he did not. Other composers- including the fourteen year old Beethoven- had written quartets for piano and strings earlier, but Mozart was the first to face squarely the challenges of this difficult form, and he wrote the first two great piano quartets.” Now in its 37th season, the Alexander String Quartet’s discography includes major cycles by Bartok, Kodaly, Mozart, Shostakovich, and Beethoven. ASQ is also an important advocate of new music, with over 35 commissions and premieres. In addition to extensive concertizing on five continents, the quartet is on the faculty of San Francisco State University where they direct the Instructional Program of the Morrison Chamber Music Center. They have been feted as Ensemble in Residence with San Francisco Performances for more than a quartet century and at the Mondavi Center at UC Davis for 15 years.

SCHUMANN Piano Quintet. BRAHMS Piano Quintet • Alexander Str Qrt; Joyce Yang (pn) • FOGHORN 2014 (70:24)



One would think that the Schumann and Brahms piano quintets would make natural partners on disc; yet, they’ve been paired together fewer times than I’d have thought. I found no more than half a dozen such couplings, and interestingly, of those, only one (not counting the present Alexander Quartet’s version) is anywhere near recent, and that is a 2007 recording with the Artemis Quartet and Leif Ove Andsnes on Virgin, which received a less than favorable review from me in 31:4. Three others fall into the historical category: a recording issued by Pearl with the Busch Quartet and Rudolf Serkin (Brahms, 1938; Schumann, 1942); a recording issued in a three-disc set by Testament with the Hollywood Quartet and Victor Aller (Brahms, 1954; Schumann, 1955); and a recording by Doremi with the Tel Aviv Quartet and Pnina Salzman (Brahms, 1974; Schumann, 1983). There’s also a pairing of the two works on a 2000 Globe CD, featuring the Rubio Quartet and Paul Komen.


This led me to wonder why these two piano quintets by two men who held each other in high esteem, and whose lives intersected in very personal ways, would not be joined together on disc more often. Then, listening to them, one after the other, as they’re programmed on the Alexander’s CD—the Schumann first, the Brahms second—some possible reasons presented themselves.


To begin with, the Brahms Piano Quintet dwarfs the Schumann, and not just in its duration, which is some 12 minutes longer, but in the thickness of its textures, the weightiness of its material, and especially the ponderousness of its piano part. Schumann, the keyboard virtuoso who wrote such magnificent music for his own instrument, also seemed to understand intuitively how to combine piano and strings in a way that was balanced and transparent and that allowed for the strings to be heard on an equal footing. He leveled the playing field. Steven Ritter, in a 34:1 review of the Quintet performed by the Leipzig Quartet and Christian Zacharias on MDG, wrote, “Schumann in this piece knew what he was writing for, and the balance among the strings with the piano is well-nigh perfect.” Exactly right.


Brahms, too, was reputedly a formidable pianist, but his writing for the instrument, at least in his earlier works, was of a different nature. It was muscular, bulky, and dense. For the string players in his Quintet, it’s a constant struggle to be heard.


Then there’s the music itself. Much of Schumann’s Quintet gives off a feeling of spontaneous inspiration. For the most part, it’s a buoyant, ebullient work. Brahms’s Quintet is not spontaneous sounding at all. Much of it, with its convoluted rhythmic contortions, sounds laboriously worked out. Add to that a score containing some of Brahms’s most violent music, and in the very dark key of F Minor—which, according to Christian Schubart’s Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst (Ideas for an Aesthetic of Sound Art) (1806), expresses “deep depression, funereal lament, groans of misery, and longing for the grave”—and you have a work that’s grim, desperate, and brutal in three of its four movements. Can there be any more sudden or crueler ending to a piece than the fateful three-note thud that decapitates the Finale dead in its tracks?


The piano quintets by Schumann and Brahms are indeed very different works, which, on emotional and psychological levels, probably wouldn’t make compatible marriage partners.


There’s also the age difference to take into account. Schumann composed his Quintet in 1842, more than 10 years before he and Clara met Brahms for the first time in Düsseldorf in 1853. By the time Brahms completed his Piano Quintet in 1864, Schumann had been dead for eight years.


But Brahms’s Quintet was one of those works that had a lengthy gestation and a difficult birth, struggling to find its final form. Originally, it took shape as a two-cello String Quintet. Had Brahms not destroyed that first version, it would have been his only string quintet scored for two cellos, following the example of Schubert’s great C-Major Quintet. As it turned out, Brahms’s only two extant string quintets, opp. 88 and 111, are scored for two violas, following the examples of Mozart.


Unhappy with the piece as a String Quintet, Brahms next revised it as a Sonata for Two Pianos. He was well enough satisfied with that version not to have destroyed it, but Clara Schumann and Hermann Levi, who performed the two-piano version together in concert, both felt that the piece needed a bigger, perhaps orchestral, treatment. Brahms wasn’t ready yet to write a symphony, but he took his friends’ advice to heart, and rearranged the score one last time as the Piano Quintet we know today. The two-piano version, however, was preserved and published as op. 34b. But filed under the category of “can’t leave well-enough alone,” the destroyed two-cello Quintet version was exhumed in a speculative reconstruction by Anssi Karttunen and recorded at least once that I know of, on a Toccata Classics CD (TOCC0066).


The Alexander’s Schumann is indeed breathtaking, as much for its sweeping lyricism and emotional responsiveness to the music’s impassioned Romantic gestures, as for its technical precision, ensemble balance, and tonal bloom. It stands head and shoulders, by far, above any of the recent recordings of the work to come my way. I already mentioned the disappointing Artemis effort; and even more recently, I found the Fine Arts Quartet’s entry with pianist Xiayin Wang on Naxos “workmanlike and professional, but not emotionally moving or inspiring.” Yet another letdown was a live recording from the Heimbach Festival with Christian Tetzlaff, Lars Vogt, and friends, a performance I found wanting for a bit more rehearsal time.


Quite honestly, until the arrival of this new version of the Schumann from the Alexander Quartet and Joyce Yang, my favorites have been a performance by the Schubert Ensemble on ASV, reviewed in 30:3, and the classic 1966 recording by the Guarneri Quartet with Arthur Rubinstein, a review of which (assuming it was reviewed) most likely predates the Fanfare Archive. The Alexander’s Schumann is simply wonderful, taking pride of place among all others with which I’m familiar.


The Brahms Quintet, too, is special. The hair-on-fire Scherzo, in particular, is a guided tour through Brahms’s rhythmic arsenal. If the players thoroughly appreciate the pulse-quickening, heart-pounding effect this movement is intended to have, and they deliver it accordingly, it should make you want to jump out of your skin. No one, of course, has literally ever done such a thing; it’s just an expression, like being beside oneself, which, according to quantum theory, at least, is a possibility. But I have to say that the Alexander’s performance is super-charged and electrifyingly exciting. Needless to say, the ensemble’s terrific reading of Brahms’s Piano Quintet is not limited to just the Scherzo. This new recording of the Schumann and Brahms piano quintets will be a serious contender for my year-end Want List.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

BRAHMS String Sextets Nos. 1 1 and 2 1. String Quintets Nos. 1 2 and 2 2 • Alexander Str Qrt; 1,2 Toby Appel (va); 1 David Requiro (vc) • FOGHORN 2012 (2 CDs: 130:33)


Completed in 1860, the first of Brahms’s two sextets is an effusive outpouring of youthful ardor that belies the age and life-experience of the 27-year-old composer who wrote it. By 1860, Brahms had already lived through the harrowing events of Schumann’s attempted suicide, commitment to a mental institution, and premature death, not to mention the effects of those events on Clara and her children. But Brahms was also in love with Clara, or at least with some idealized love surrogate for Clara, and this B?-Major Sextet seems to sing a song of blissful, sun-filled days, until the arrival of the second movement, that is—a set of variations in D Minor on a theme strongly redolent of the Gypsy melos Brahms picked up during his tour with Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi and which would infuse much of his music for the rest of his life.


Perhaps the most amazing aspect of this Sextet is the clarity of the textures and lines Brahms maintains throughout the work, in spite of the addition of two more instruments to the ensemble and the thickness of the scoring. It’s a transparency that can be heard with penetrating purity in this performance by the Alexander Quartet in which Tony Appel takes the first viola part, and David Requiro takes the second cello part.


Four years later, Brahms turned his attention to a second sextet, this time in G Major, completing it in 1865. Throughout its composition, Brahms was involved in the most serious romantic dalliance of his life, one that very nearly led to the marriage altar. The woman was Agathe von Siebold, to whom Brahms had proposed. Then, suddenly, Brahms got cold feet and broke off the engagement. What this has to do with the Sextet is that it contains one of the composer’s rare (perhaps only) use of a musical cryptogram in which bars 162–168 of the first movement contain the notes A-G-A-D-H (B)-E, a reference to Agathe.


The G-Major Sextet is also richly melodic, but tinged perhaps with just a bit of wistful nostalgia and regret; at 32, Brahms is becoming the sorrowful, lonely traveler we know from many of his later works. The minor-key Scherzo, which now comes in second place, and the Poco Adagio which follows it, have a certain portentous gravitas about them, as if Brahms now knows the journey going forward will not be a particularly happy one for him.


Toby Appel and David Requiro switch roles for the G-Major Sextet, with Appel playing second viola and Requiro playing first cello. The effect on the ensemble is a darkening one, which suits the music perfectly. Go-to, long-time favorites in this piece have been the Nash Ensemble on Onyx and the Raphael Ensemble on Hyperion, but once again, the Alexander Quartet, joined by Appel and Requiro, makes a most persuasive case for the score with a tonal refulgence, textural translucence, and expressivity of phrasing that are hard to resist.


Much later in Brahms’s output come the two string quintets. The F-Major was written in 1882 at Bad Ischl, the composer’s favorite summer retreat. The normally highly self-critical Brahms was so pleased with the work that he wrote to his publisher, “You have never had such a beautiful work from me,” and in a letter to Clara Schumann, he called it “one of my finest works.” History has not necessarily concurred, if one judges by the number of recordings the piece has received; at around 30, it would seem to be Brahms’s least popular chamber work. Hearing it, one has to wonder why, for it contains some of the composer’s most haimish music, warm, sun-drenched, and filled with the optimism and promise borne by a spring day. Unusual for Brahms’s larger chamber works as well is the fact that the Quintet is in three movements instead of four, with the second movement combining elements of a slow movement and a Scherzo into one.


I first learned the quintets from the 1970s LP recordings by the Guarneri Quartet with Michael Tree, which I reviewed in their digitized transfers in 32:6. The players bring a great deal of warmth and bigheartedness to their readings, but they’re perhaps not quite as technically polished as are the Boston Symphony Chamber Players on a Nonesuch CD, which I’ve long enjoyed. I haven’t heard the Uppsala Chamber Soloists’ recent entry on Daphne, which Lynn Bayley praised highly in 37:1, but of those I am familiar with—and in addition to the above-cited Guarneri and Boston versions, they include the Juilliard Quartet with Walter Trampler and the Hagen Quartet with Gérard Caussé—I’d have to say that the Alexander Quartet with Tony Appel outshines them all. The readings are closest to the classic Guarneri accounts in their warmth and beauteous sound, but more technically polished, better balanced, and offering more detailed recorded sound.


The same may be said of the G-Major Quintet, op. 111, the work Brahms intended to be his last, but as we know, Fate had other plans for him. The Quintet was composed in 1890, again at Bad Ischl, as the previous Quintet had been. Surprisingly, there’s no sense of leave-taking, nothing autumnal in the character of this music. It’s in fact quite joyful. In certain ways, however, it does sum up the totality of Brahms’s art. It has been called the composer’s most cosmopolitan work, suggesting a diversity of Italian, Viennese, Hungarian, and Slavic influences. The score has an almost serenade-like personality to it, reflecting back on Brahms’s early orchestral serenades.


These are performances to fall in love with and to live with happily ever after.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Cindy Cox's new string quartet, Patagón, which takes its title from an ancient name for the region of Patagonia, was inspired by the composer's sabatical to South America. The piece employs a variety of tone colors through the use of various plaing techniques, creating dynamic and exotic soundscapes. Patagón was commissioned by the Alexander String Quartet on the occasion of their thirtieth anniversary season and is the latest addition to their prolific catalog of recordings on Foghorn Classics.

BARTÓK String Quartets No. 1–6. KODÁLY String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2 • Alexander Str Qrt • FOGHORN 2009 (3 CDs: 205:55)


This fascinating set combines the string quartets of two then-young professors of music in Hungary, Béla Bartók and Zoltan Kodály. It’s an interesting set even though Bartók wrote a half-dozen quartets, which have since become staples of string quartets around the world, whereas Kodály only wrote two which are not as frequently programmed. Nor are the Kodály quartets as frequently recorded: ArkivMusic lists only one other recording of the First Quartet, by the Kontra Quartet (BIS 564), and only seven other recordings of Kodály’s No. 2, of which three are historical performances (the Végh Quartet, 1951, on Orfeo 316931; the Hungarian Quartet, 1952, on Music & Arts; and the Hollywood String Quartet, 1958, on Testament). Bartók beat Kodály to his First Quartet by a matter of months, the premiere occurring on January 27, 1909. Both composers worked on their second quartets during the harsh period of the First World War, and both works also had their premieres in 1918. For whatever reason, Kodály stopped at this point, whereas Bartók wrote four more quartets.


Comparing the Emerson Quartet’s performances of the First and Third Bartók quartets to the Alexander’s (I really didn’t have time to do the entire set, but these two quartets provide a good basis, the First being from Bartók’s earlier period and the Third coming from 1927), I found interesting if subtle points of comparison. But my Fanfare colleague Art Lange, upon reviewing the Emerson set when it was reissued in 2007, went even further back, comparing it to the performances of the Hungarian Quartet, and noted the earlier group’s “looser, albeit dramatic approach” in which the Hungarians “take a few liberties with pauses and tempos” and “have a better feel for the folk elements,” though—and I stress this—the earlier group tended to lessen “the accumulated tension” and “exaggerate more of the mysterious and atmospheric passages.” This trend, then, is simply turned up a notch in intensity and continuity by the Alexander, bringing us a tad further forward from the folk style that Bartók used.


With the Third Quartet, Bartók’s most astringent, compact, and dense work of the six, the style of playing is virtually identical in the case of both the Emerson and the Alexander: sonorities are lean, attacks are sharp, and the musical contours angular. There aren’t many interpretive options in this particular piece. But in the First Quartet (as well as in the first movement of the Second, which I also compared), there are decided differences in approach and style. The Emerson employs particularly broad tempos in the opening movement of the First Quartet, taking a leisurely 9:16 compared to the Alexander’s 8: 30. There is also greater warmth in the Emerson’s sound: whether this is a condition of their actual timbres or simply advantageous microphone placement, I don’t know. Of course, the leaner, brighter quality of the Alexander’s recording is entirely appropriate to modern music, particularly the modern music that emerged after Bartók’s death, and even within the context of these six quartets their performances set a very high standard.


As an example, I felt that the Alexander’s performance of the First Quartet’s opening movement, though less leisurely in feeling, has a tensile quality that immerses the listener in Bartók’s unique sound world and holds your attention. It is almost as if the Alexander’s players had the entire score in their heads, could “see” the music progressing as one continuous flow from first note to last, and thus propelled it into the ether for the benefit of the microphones. They do not, thankfully, play mechanically, the music being produced with almost explosive energy and drama. Yet if one goes by timings, the evidence is not always in the Emerson’s favor. The Alexander nearly always takes the fast movements just as fast if not faster than the Emerson, whereas their slow movements are generally (but not always) more relaxed, an exception being the Lento Finale of the Second Quartet, which the Emerson explores in 9:18 while the Alexander gets it done in 7: 38. As I say, tempos do not always indicate phrasing, but a performance nearly two minutes shorter simply has to be taken faster. What’s interesting, however, is that by and large the Alexander’s performance only sounds a little faster, and once again it ties this movement into the overall fabric—the continuity—of the Quartet as a whole.


The Alexander also finds moments of repose within their forward momentum; it’s just that their moments of repose are subtler, less easily discernible as pauses in the music (comparing it to literature, one might say commas in the musical sentences). To a large extent, Bartók’s six quartets are the 20th-century equivalent of Beethoven’s late quartets, and one can most certainly make a generalization between the way earlier string quartets such as the Rosé played them—with a certain amount of gemütlich, more portamento than we are used to today, and more astringent string tone due to the musicians’ more frequent (but not constant) use of straight tone—and the way we’ve come to hear them since the days of the Budapest Quartet, surely the first “modern” string quartet in terms of tautness and ensemble virtuosity, and the Yale Quartet, whose 1961 recordings of these thorny works set new standards. We simply can’t go back to the Rosé Quartet and hear their performances of Beethoven as being within our conception of the music; yet both as a quartet leader and as concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic, Arnold Rosé’s artistry and integrity as a musician was utterly beyond question.


I mention this in connection to these performances because it is not only an interesting artistic topic, but also valid in evaluating the evolution of musical performances in the 20th century and beyond. Bartók’s Fourth Quartet, composed in 1928, was in fact dedicated to the Pro Arte Quartet. I daresay that only diehard collectors of vintage performances will be familiar with Pro Arte’s style (they recorded an extensive series of Haydn quartets for HMV in the 1930s, a project ended by the onset of war, and also performed frequently both on and off records with pianist Artur Schnabel), but they were somewhere between the Rosé and the Budapest Quartets. There is a more consistent vibrato, fine and rapid but still discernible, in their playing than in the case of the Rosé, but also a slightly more relaxed rhythmic feel, a bit more give-and-take, than we hear in the playing of the Budapest and the many quartets that followed them. (I should point out that I heard the Hungarian Quartet in person playing Beethoven in 1970, but this was a later edition of this famous group and their style, too, had evolved into a more consistent forward momentum by then, not like their style of the 1950s.)


Checking on the artists’ own website (foghornclassics.com), I was startled to read in a review by Lisa Hirsch of the San Francisco Classical Voice that the Alexander’s live performance of one of the Bartók quartets was “introverted,” without “neglecting the work’s varying moods.” Introverted is not a word I’d apply to these explosive performances. They are indeed fantastic, although I would caution that Bartók’s continual intensity, as well as the extraordinarily dense harmonies and counterpoint, make listening to all six quartets in one sitting a tough go. I would suggest hearing two quartets at a time, separated by either periods of silence or less challenging music. Listening to even three of these works in one session is rather like listening to a full 70-minute CD of Art Tatum. The concentrated complexity of the music that unfolds can tire even a seasoned listener like myself out.


Then we turn to the Kodály quartets, less familiar works surely (this was the first time I had ever heard them), but once again we can make certain generalizations regarding the Alexander’s performances of them as based on the details and style one hears in their Bartók. Even the earlier Quartet No. 1 is given a taut, clean reading, bringing it close in style to Bartók’s own work. Of course, Kodály was his own man: although he assisted Bartók in recording and cataloguing Magyar folk melodies, and used some of their features in his own work, he was more consistent in writing longer, less sharply angular melodies. In short, Kodály’s music sings more, a factor that surely attracted more conductors of his time to perform his music during the 1920s and 1930s than was often Bartók’s fate. In this respect, Kodály’s quartets are a bit closer in general conception (but not exact details) to Janá?ek, whose quartets actually “sing” more than his operas. Listen particularly to the slow movements here: Kodály’s music, and the Alexander’s playing of it, are exceptionally lovely and moving in addition to being musically clean. Once again, as in their Bartók, the Alexander has found a way of bringing out the music’s tender side when tenderness is called for—which is more frequently in these Kodály works.


The list price of this set is $29.96, which breaks down to $9.93 per CD, a very reasonable price in this modern era, but the Alexander’s website indicates that Allegro Music is selling the set for $23.97 (which you can order directly from them), which breaks down to $7.99 per disc, bringing it into line with a budget label such as Naxos. I still like the Emerson’s recordings of the Bartók, but as a total package this one is irresistible. If you’ve put off buying a set of the Bartók quartets until now, and/or don’t have any recordings of the Kodály, you can’t go wrong with this collection. It is, quite simply, terrific.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Classical Music

Classical Music

The Alexander String Quartet turns its attention to Mozart’s last years, beginning with this recording of the final four quartets (the first of a three-volume set which will add his other great chamber works from that period). Eric Bromberger’s liner notes are prefaced by comments from ASQ violist Paul Yarbrough, excerpted here: “Taken as a whole, Mozart’s works for string quartet, piano quartet, viola quintet, and clarinet quintet are a monumental accomplishment, as they codified the evolution of classical chamber music. He had taken Haydn’s brilliant efforts with the string quartet and elevated and broadened the genre, while adhering to Haydn’s formal and conversational precedent. But however much Mozart’s late chamber works conform, they are never “conformist.” They still have the capacity to be stunningly original, and even, especially for the listeners of the time, shocking.” Now in its 35th season, the Alexander String Quartet’s discography includes major cycles by Bartok, Kodaly, Mozart, Shostakovich, and Beethoven. ASQ is also an important advocate of new music, with over 35 commissions and premieres.

The Alexander String Quartet launches its 40th season with this recording of Brahms String Quartets — plus Brahms’ Intermezzo (transcribed for string quartet by Zakarias Grafilo). With these complete Brahms quartets, the ASQ has compiled a veritable Brahms compendium, including Brahms’ Clarinet Quintets (FCL 2021, with Eli Eban) and Piano Quintets (FCL 2014, with Joyce Yang), both named MusicWeb International Recordings of the Year, as well as his String Quintets and Sextets (FCL 2012), which were hailed as a “life-enhancing set” by The Arts Desk. The Alexander String Quartet was formed in New York City in 1981 and captured international attention as the first American quartet to win the London International String Quartet Competition in 1985. The quartet has received honorary degrees from Allegheny College and St. Lawrence University, and Presidential medals from Baruch College (CUNY). The Alexander String Quartet is a major artistic pres­ence in its home base of San Francisco, serving since 1989 as Ensemble in Residence for San Francisco Performances and Directors of the Instructional Program for the Morrison Chamber Music Center in the College of Liberal and Creative Arts at San Francisco State University.

Classical Music

Electrifying clarinetist Eli Eban and the Alexander String Quartet celebrate the two masterpieces widely considered the preeminent works in their form: the clarinet quintets by Mozart and Brahms. Eric Bromberger writes: “Composers have been drawn to the combination of clarinet and string quartet ever since the clarinet began to take shape in the eighteenth century. The mellow sound and agility of the clarinet make it an ideal complement to the resonant warmth and harmonic richness of the string quartet, and the range of composers who have written for this pairing is extraordinarily diverse, including Weber, Meyerbeer, Reger, Busoni, Hindemith, and — more recently — Carter and Widmann. Yet all these compositions, varied as they are, exist within the shadow of the two towering masterpieces composed for clarinet and string quartet, the quintets of Mozart and Brahms. Those two quintets are invariably paired in recordings, as they are on this album. And it is quite right that they should be. They are two of the finest chamber works by two of the greatest composers, and there are many parallels between them: both were written late in their creators’ lives, both were inspired by contact with a particular clarinetist, and both beautifully integrate the quite different sonorities of clarinet and string quartet. Neither work is in any way valedictory, yet — coming near the end of each composer’s life — they represent some of the most refined and expressive music of Mozart and Brahms.”

The Alexander String Quartet and guitarist William Kanengiser form a dynamic collaboration that explores the music of Sting, Led Zeppelin, John Dowland and The Beatles by way of contemporary composers Ian Krouse, Dušan Bogdanovic and Leo Brouwer. In this project, William Kanengiser and the Alexander String Quartet pay tribute to a group of English musicians who conquered the musical world with their revolutionary explorations. From the Elizabethan lutenist John Dowland to the pop/rock icons Sting, The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, these artists made a lasting impact far from the shores of their small island. Their music served as inspiration for a set of compositions for guitar and string quartet by the talented composers Ian Krouse, Dušan Bogdanovic and Léo Brouwer. It is especially appropriate that the guitar sits squarely at the center of these works, as the plucked string was the primary musical voice of these British innovators.