Schumann : String Quartets Op. 41

Album review

It’s in a small comic filled with self-derision that the Modigliani Quartet describe their background, from the founding of the quartet in 2003 to its beginnings at the Berliner Philharmonie in 2017: First Prize Winners of the Young Concert Artists in New York, which opened the doors of the Carnegie Hall to them in 2006, Grand Prix Winners of Académie Charles Cros two years later with Haydn, artistic directors of the Evian Festival in 2014… An impressive and international pedigree for this quartet originally founded by four students of the Conservatoire de Paris keen to try their hands on the greatest chamber music repertoire. This new recording of the sole three quartets of Schumann, works created in one go in 1842 – two years after 1840, “the year of the Lied”, and one year before the two chamber masterpieces that are the Piano Quartet and the Piano Quintet. It’s true that in these quartets, Schumann doesn’t stray too far from Beethoven and even less from Mendelssohn (posthumously dedicatee), maybe the consequence of an inevitably more linear and contrapuntal writing, not as harmonic as the addition of a piano would allow. The fact remains that the Modiglianis capture these three singular works and restore their lines rather than looking for a dense, symphonic and pianistic texture that is not theirs. © SM/Qobuz