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String Quartets 2 & 3

Brodsky Quartet

String Quartets 2 & 3

Format: CD
Label: Challenge Classics
UPC: 0608917209921
Catnr: CC 72099
Release date: 01 January 2002
1 CD
 
Label
Challenge Classics
UPC
0608917209921
Catalogue number
CC 72099
Release date
01 January 2002

"["]..'So that a bit of us accompanies you on your adventure. We are all "revelations" as you know. Just go on expanding'.""

Gramophone, 01-7-2015
Album
Artist(s)
Composer(s)
Press
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NL

About the album

B. Britten - String Quartet No. 2 in C Major, Op. 36

In 1945 the British musical world commemorated the 200th anniversary of the death of English baroque composer Henry Purcell. Although Britten was said to keep always a copy of Haydn string quartets at his beside, he was not a natural sonata-form composer. But the few times he did use this form (which is the natural form of the string quartet) he employed it very originally and very well. The first movement has the expected two contrasting subjects (although one of them spins off yet a third theme). All of them, however, are derived from the same wide leap of a major tenth (the interval spanned in a leap from C to the E an octave higher). This movement, marked "Allegro calmo, " is an economical, consoling piece with muted contrasts. At its end all three themes are played at once. The contrasting middle movement is a sinister night piece. Together they take up only a bit more than ten minutes.
The bulk of the quartet is found in the third movement, lasting 18 minutes. It is here that the obvious tribute to Purcell is found, for it has the name "Chacony, " Purcell's term for "chaconne, " a form that that baroque master had made his own. It is in the form of nine-bar ground bass theme with 21 variations. It is magnificent both structurally and musically, among the finest ground-bass movements ever written for string quartet. Throughout the quartet Britten exhibits his special skill in creating fresh sounds for string ensemble. It is a masterpiece in the already-rich repertoire of the string quartet.

B. Britten - ​String Quartet No. 3, Op. 94

When a composer of note writes a string quartet very near to his death, and we have reason to know that the composer felt the imminence of the end, the listener somehow expects a personal deathbed statement, as it were, from this most intimate of musical media. Britten's final quartet meets this expectation.
It is in a five movement form; like Britten's Second Quartet it contains a Passacaglia final movement and makes notable use of cadenzas. Very rarely for Britten there is a quotation from an earlier work. For there are frequent allusions to Britten's last opera, Death in Venice. Indeed, the final movement of the quartet is named "La Serenissima, " which is an old title for the Venetian Republic. Death in Venice occupied a very special place in Britten's output, for it was only then that he dealt openly with homosexuality as the main subject of a major work.
Britten revisited Venice after his half-successful surgery (he suffered his stroke during the surgery). It was a place he had always loved, as well as being the setting of the opera, and perhaps he realized it was his last visit. During the trip wrote the string quartet in order to be sure of fulfilling a long-standing promise that sometime he would write another quartet; it is also likely that he realized that he must write it now. So his quotations from his Venetian opera are fraught with personal significance. There is an air of serene beauty, of an acceptance of self, that perhaps was achieved through the self-examination that was inevitable in composing Death in Venice, and which Britten may have wanted to link to the city itself in the homage he gave it in this masterpiece of the modern string quartet.

Descriptions by Joseph Stevenson
www.allmusic.com
De laatste twee strijkkwartetten van Britten
Op dit album zijn Benjamin Brittens Tweede en Derde Strijkkwartet te horen, tevens zijn laatste twee strijkkwartetten. Het Tweede kwartet werd voor het eerst opgevoerd in 1945, tijdens een concert ter gelegenheid van een herdenking van de Engelse componist Henry Purcell, die dat jaar 250 jaar geleden was gestorven. Het stuk is één van de weinige werken waarin Britten een sonatevorm hanteert, ondanks dat dit de meest gebruikelijke vorm is voor een strijkkwartet. Het stuk begint met de introductie van twee thema’s in het eerste deel die in het tweede deel uitgebreid worden uiteengezet. Het grootste gedeelte van het werk zit echter in het 18 minuten durende derde deel, waarin de verwijzing naar Purcell het meest duidelijk is, aangezien het de naam ‘Chacony’ draagt: de naam die Purcell gaf aan zijn chaconne, een vormstructuur uit de barok. Het stuk is een meesterwerk binnen het al enorm rijke repertoire van de strijkkwartetten.

Zijn laatste strijkkwartet werd geschreven in 1975, een jaar voor zijn dood op een moment dat hij al enorm leed aan een geestesziekte. Het is zijn laatste grote instrumentale werk: een zeer intrigerend stuk waarin alle mogelijke combinaties van het strijkkwartet worden verkend en op virtuoze wijze worden gepresenteerd.

De stukken worden uitgevoerd door het Brodsky Quartet. Het Brodsky Quartet is in 1972 opgericht door een groep Engelse musici. Het kwartet staat bekend om hun gedurfde keuzes voor vernieuwende en uitdagende muziek. Ze worden internationaal geprezen om hun levendigheid en ongekende kwaliteit in hun spel.

Artist(s)

Brodsky Quartet

Since its formation in 1972, the Brodsky Quartet has performed over 3000 concerts on the major stages of the world and has released more than 60 recordings. A natural curiosity and an insatiable desire to explore has propelled the group in a number of artistic directions and continues to ensure them not only a prominent presence on the international chamber music scene, but also a rich and varied musical existence. Their energy and craftsmanship has attracted numerous awards and accolades worldwide, while ongoing educational work provides a vehicle for passing on experience and staying in touch with the next generation. Throughout their 40-year career, the Brodsky Quartet has enjoyed a busy international performing schedule, and has toured extensively throughout Australasia, North...
more

Since its formation in 1972, the Brodsky Quartet has performed over 3000 concerts on the major stages of the world and has released more than 60 recordings. A natural curiosity and an insatiable desire to explore has propelled the group in a number of artistic directions and continues to ensure them not only a prominent presence on the international chamber music scene, but also a rich and varied musical existence. Their energy and craftsmanship has attracted numerous awards and accolades worldwide, while ongoing educational work provides a vehicle for passing on experience and staying in touch with the next generation.
Throughout their 40-year career, the Brodsky Quartet has enjoyed a busy international performing schedule, and has toured extensively throughout Australasia, North and South America, Asia, South Africa, and Europe, as well as performing at many of the UK’s major festivals and venues. The quartet is also regularly recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio. Over the years the Brodsky Quartet has undertaken numerous performances of the complete cycles of quartets by Schubert, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Britten, Schoenberg, Zemlinsky, Webern and Bartok. It is, however, the complete Shostakovich cycle that has now become synonymous with their name: their 2012 London performance of the cycle resulting in them taking the prestigious title of ‘Artist in Residence’ at London’s Kings Place.
The Brodsky Quartet also has a busy recording career, and 2012 marked the beginning of a new and exclusive relationship with Chandos Records. Releases on the label so far include Petits Fours,a celebratory album of ‘Encore’ pieces, arranged exclusively by the Quartet for their 40th anniversary; a Debussy compilation including the Quartet's long-awaited recording of the great Debussy Quartet; In the South featuring works by Verdi, Paganini, Wolf and Puccini; New World Quartets comprising works by Dvorak, Copland, Gershwin and Brubeck; and the first of two Brahms discs which includes the iconic Clarinet Quintet with collaborating partner, Michael Collins. Recent awards for recordings include the Diapason D'Or and the CHOC du Monde de la Musique for their recordings of string quartets by Britten, Beethoven and Janacek, and, for their outstanding contribution to innovation in programming, the Brodsky Quartet has received a Royal Philharmonic Society Award. They have taught at many international chamber music courses and held residencies in several music institutes, including the first such post at the University of Cambridge. They are currently International Fellows of Chamber Music at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and have been awarded Honorary Doctorates at the University of Kent and University of Teesside.
The Quartet is named after the great Russian violinist Adolf Brodsky, dedicatee of Tchaikovsky's violin concerto and a passionate chamber musician.
Daniel Rowland plays a violin made by Lorenzo Storioni of Cremona in 1793; Ian Belton’s violin is by Gio. Paolo Maggini c.1615 and Paul Cassidy plays on La Delfina viola, c. 1720, courtesy of Sra. Delfina Entrecanales. Jacqueline Thomas plays a cello made by Thomas Perry in 1785.


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Composer(s)

Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten is one most important British composers from the second half of the twentieth century. Remarkably, he focused on opera, a dying genre, at least in its current form. Britten's contributions however, among which Peter Grimes, The Rape of Lucretia, Gloriana, The Turn of the Screw, and Death in Venice, managed to remain core repertoire for opera companies to this day. Many of these productions included a role for his artistic partner and life companion Peter Pears. Britten also wrote a number of lieder for this tenor, among which his Serenade for tenor, horn and string orchestra. Yet, Britten excelled in many more genres. He wasn't even 20 years old when he composed his brilliant Phantasy for hobo quartet and his friendship with...
more

Benjamin Britten is one most important British composers from the second half of the twentieth century. Remarkably, he focused on opera, a dying genre, at least in its current form. Britten's contributions however, among which Peter Grimes, The Rape of Lucretia, Gloriana, The Turn of the Screw, and Death in Venice, managed to remain core repertoire for opera companies to this day. Many of these productions included a role for his artistic partner and life companion Peter Pears. Britten also wrote a number of lieder for this tenor, among which his Serenade for tenor, horn and string orchestra. Yet, Britten excelled in many more genres. He wasn't even 20 years old when he composed his brilliant Phantasy for hobo quartet and his friendship with the legendary cellist Rostropovich led to a Cello sonata, three Suites for cello solo and a Symphony for Cello and orchestra in the 1960s.

Britten never became Master of the Queen's Music, yet he surely had feeling for public sentiments. For example, as a pacifist, he taught his people about world peace through his War Requiem from 1962. Britten was an excellent interpreter of his own work, just like Bartók and Stravinsky. Many of his recordings have been matched, but never exceeded.


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Press

["]..'So that a bit of us accompanies you on your adventure. We are all "revelations" as you know. Just go on expanding'."
Gramophone, 01-7-2015

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