Verdi - Sibelius

Album review

Here is a truly sublime record: the string quartets of two composers known for completely different genres (opera for Verdi and symphony and symphonic poetry for Sibelius) are united. They are certainly two composers of opposing horizons, of incomparable aesthetic and universe. However, the formidable Vertigo String Quartet - one of the best quartets in the world - unites them with an irrepressible realism and bright tenderness of great sensitivity and subtleness. Verdi composed, with “amusement”, his brief Quartet in 1873 and regarded the piece of chamber music with distance, in no way considering it a major work of his. The Vertigo String Quartet naturally tailors it to German traditions, not too far off the works of Mendelssohn for example, through highlighting the inventive instrumentation, notably in the intriguing finale. A knockout Scherzo (Allegro assai mosso) in which some methods, strangely, evoke the universe of the Finnish composer with its harmonic bass pedals. The transition into Sibelius’ Voces intimae is natural but the expression remains, of course, radically different. For the Sibelius section, Vertavo’s incredibly beautiful strings have their own extraordinary clarity, and the balance between the four instruments, very difficult in this often neglected score, are simply exceptional (Vivace, Adagio di motto). Composed in 1909, the Quartet “Voces intimae” remains intimately linked to the Fourth Symphony. The Adagio di molto material encounters a second flourish in the slow section (Il tempo largo) in the Fourth. Vertavo play the Quartet “Voces intimae” precisely like a miniature symphony, detailing with almost surgical precision (but never cold!) the harmonic superpositions, bursting textures and an absolute absence of classical polyphony: the purely timbral aspect of the Sibelian universe is displayed with a spellbinding nature - the passages in “moto perpetuo” in the final Allegro are unforgettable! Here, the Vertavo String Quartet, through its stylistic accuracy have recorded without a doubt one of the strongest interpretations since the, historic, Fitzwilliam String Quartet’s for Decca in 1978. © Pierre-Yves Lascar/Qobuz