String Quartet No. 2, Op. 26 | String Quartet No. 3, Op. 34

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There’s a compelling, sepia-toned puckish air to the opening of Korngold’s String Quartet No. 2 under the fingers of the Alma Quartet. Instantly you’re in old-world Vienna, in the hands of this young composer prodigy whose language was both steeped in his city’s string quartet heritage, and carrying a high romance that would make him an instant hit in Hollywood, to where he would flee just the following year as Hitler rose to power. Add a notably high-definition delivery – think airy textures and attractively dryly clipped articulation – and it’s a high-impact entry to what is also a direct-to-disc recording on vinyl, i.e. a single take rather than a digitally edited amalgam of the best of several takes; and certainly there’s a live frisson about the resultant vividly captured sound.

The other quality you’re instantly clocking, as already hinted, is the sheer characterfulness of the playing. In fact it’s almost as if the quartet’s movements are actually character pieces, and this in turn is due to the quartet’s perhaps controversial decision not to be complete slaves to the score’s tempi and articulation markings, but instead to experiment between “what was written down and what felt right” in order to best understand Korngold’s idiom. You really hear the fruits of that in the following perky Intermezzo, whose exaggerated accents and rubato ring with Haydn-esque humour.

The Third Quartet of 1945 is a much darker work, full of the wartime context and his own depression as it is of themes he used in his film scores, and this has been highly effectively brought out. Especially moving here is the slow third movement with its instruction to be played like a folk song, the Alma often bringing a shimmering vocal quality to its elegiac lyricism.

Fascinating and enjoyable in equal measure. © Charlotte Gardner/Qobuz