Beethoven: String Quartets, Op. 95 "Serioso" & Op. 59 No. 1 "Razumovsky"

Album review

This isn't exactly the Artemis Quartett's first recording of any Beethoven quartets -- there was a disc attached to a BBC Magazine in 2003 with
recordings of Beethoven's Opus 18 No. 2 and Opus 131. But for a quartet whose previous major-label experience has consisted of three discs -- one of György Ligeti, one of Dimitri Terzakis, and one coupling works by Berg and Webern -- Beethoven still seems like something of a stretch. But while the listener can tell from the edge of the quartet's attack and the intensity of its expressivity that the Artemis is a post-modernist quartet, the warmth and depth of its interpretations made it clear that it is also deeply in the tradition. Thus, while the intellectual rigor of the furious F minor Quartet Op. 95 compares the first Alban Berg Quartet recording, there is still something of the soul of the first Budapest Quartet's recording in the tone. And while the Fugue on a Russian Theme Finale of the enormous F major Quartet, Op. 59/1, is as vigorously argued as the Neues Leipzig Quartett's recording, there is something of the classic Amadeus Quartet's early '60s recording in the Adagio molto e mesto. One can only hope that this is the start of a complete Beethoven cycle. Heck, one can only hope there'd simply be more releases of anything the first-class Artemis Quartett wants to record. Virgin's sound is warm, deep, and true.

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