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For its very first recording on Chandos, the Arcadia String Quartet presents what has been at the very heart of its musical career and influences: the complete string quartets by Bartók. With the music of the Hungarian composer, the members of this Romanian ensemble, neighbours of his birthplace, have won such major careershaping competitions as Osaka, the Wigmore Hall, and Hamburg. Bartók’s attachment to the string quartet – as to no other genre – was to the keystone of the Viennese tradition, but with the aim of moving the medium out of its native city a little, into the countryside of alternative tonalities and rhythms. The six mature works he wrote are being revealed here with all the singular patterns, mixed modalities, bitterness, lamentations, and, at times, bright folk influences which they contain. © Chandos

‘When we approach a composer, we like to immerse ourselves in his or her early works, in order to understand the evolution of the person behind the score. ‘It was quite naturally that the idea emerged of coupling a youthful quartet, no.10, composed at the age of sixteen, with a masterpiece by the mature Schubert, the “Death and the Maiden” Quartet no.14. As in the case of Mozart on our first recording, we wanted to present two different atmospheres with two quartets by the same composer. ‘This journey through time sheds a new light on the later works, because the process of getting to know the young Franz Schubert naturally means deepening our knowledge of his language, but also allows us to refine our appropriation of the style, sound and articulation specific to him. ‘In Quartet no.10, we tried to achieve purity in our playing, a crystalline sound that allows the music to unfold in the most fluid and natural way, keeping in mind the intimacy of the family living room for which these pages were written. ‘In no.14, more tormented, brusquer, more intense, we attempt to pay homage to the work’s symphonic dimension, and to its most sombre, most violent asperities. ‘Two sides to one man: the bright and dark faces of Schubert.’ Quatuor Van Kuijk © Outhere Music

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Since its foundation in Munich, the Goldmund Quartet has quickly asserted itself as one of the most magnificent young European ensembles. They have already played at the Festival d’Aix, the Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele, at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, and toured France, Scandinavia, the USA and Canada, Austria – visiting Vienna's prestigious Musikverein – and Switzerland.. This first album, dedicated to the father of the quartet, Haydn, was unanimously hailed by critics: this new album dedicated to Shostakovich, comprising the phenomenal Third Quartet from 1946 (which was censured by the communist regime for "pessimism and formalism"), and the rarer Ninth from 1964 – a much more mature work – which, rarely for this composer, was subject to many revisions. So we welcome this new performance, in which the quartet truly give them impression of playing a single, sixteen-stringed instrument rather than four separate ones. © SM/Qobuz

This new album seems to confirm that the Girard Quartet, born of a litter of great French musicians, is now all grown up. Founded by members of the Ysaÿe Quartet, the Girard Quartet won the Geneva Competition in 2011, after taking the Prize of the Maurice Ravel Academy in Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Currently residing at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium, they also work with the Singer-Polignac Foundation. The title of their fourth recording, "The Starry Sky" is borrowed from Philippe Hersant's Fourth Quartet, Der gestirner Himmel, written in 2012 "in response" to Beethoven's Quartet op. 59 n° 2 specifically the slow movement conceived as "a meditation on the harmony of the spheres, before the starry sky in the silence of the night." Like Beethoven, who of course features on this record, Hersant is expressing here, through a long, single movement, his "aspiration for a union of heaven and earth", through a resolutely accessible language which holds out its hand towards the Beethovian model, borrowing from it a few rhythmic and thematic cells, and to the late Romanticism of the Schönberg of the Verklärte Nacht, another great nocturnal meditation. Note also the magnificent cohesion of the Girard Quartet, as well as its accumulated power of expression and its superb ensemble sound, bolstered by the use of four instruments made between 2014 and 2016 by the Parisian manufacturer Charles Coquet, whose work is inspired by the great artisanal producers of stringed instruments from centuries gone by. © François Hudry/Qobuz

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On the occasion of the bicentenary of Charles Gounod’s birth, this first complete string quartet (including two unpublished ones) on period instruments reveals an unknown part of his production, dominated by vocal music. Composer of the very end of the 19th century, Gounod and his five quartets are the worthy heir of the Viennese classicism tradition. The lyrical accents of the Quartet in G minor or the airy lightness of the Scherzo of the Petit Quatuor evoke nothing less than the names of Schubert and Mendelssohn. The musicians of the Quatuor Cambini-Paris (Julien Chauvin, Karine Crocquenoy, Pierre-Éric Nimylowycz and Atsushi Sakaï) gracefully reproduce these pages, full of gravity and sweetness. © Aparté/Little Tribeca

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Franz Schubert's songs sometimes found their way into his instrumental works, perhaps most famously in the fourth movement of the Piano Quintet in A major, D667, "Trout," which was based on Die Forelle, D550; the Wanderer Fantasy in C major, D760, which was inspired by Der Wanderer, D489; and the second movement of the String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, D810, which was based on Der Tod und das Mädchen, D531. Digging a little deeper into Schubert's oeuvre, the Signum Quartett explores less obvious relationships, though no less significant, because the mixing of songs and instrumental works was common at his private concerts for his friends, the Schubertiades. This 2018 release on PentaTone Classics, Aus der ferne, presents a handful of Lieder in arrangements for string quartet by the group's violist, Xandi van Dijk, and two lyrical chamber works, the String Quartet No. 8 in B flat major, D112, and the String Quartet No 13 in A minor, "Rosamunde." Listening to this hybrid SACD doesn't require any special research or careful bar-by-bar analysis, because Schubert's melodies are plainly evident and the Signum Quartett plays with great warmth and a light, lyrical spirit, so the program works exceptionally well as pure music, intriguing as the connections between the songs and the quartets are.

The Elias Quartet has already recorded a complete cycle of Beethoven quartets at Wigmore Hall that was extremely well received by the critics. Now Sara Bitlloch, Donald Grant, Martin Saving and Marie Bitlloch present on Alpha an album devoted to Schumann: "We have always had a special affection for Robert Schumann’s Third Quartet. It’s one of the first works we played together. Since then we have often come back to it, as if to a splendid and familiar region that we think we know thoroughly, but which yields up new secrets with each visit. The Second Quartet, on the other hand, was a much later and more complicated discovery for us. The writing is so personal, so unidiomatic for the instruments, so full of nuances, that to begin with we found it hard to come up with a unanimous voice for this work. The enthusiasm of the first movement can easily turn into anxiety if you push it a bit too far. In the slow movement, the texture is sometimes so bare that to convey its tenderness you have to sustain it with great fervour. The capricious Scherzo is bristling with rhythmic pitfalls and requires a diabolical mastery of the instruments, while the Finale is an endless explosion of joy!". © Alpha Classics

Two years after its very well received recording of three Schumann quartets, Quatuor Hermès – created about ten years ago – is turning its attention to three staple French masterpieces: Ravel and Debussy’s quartets (two iconic figures of their − relatively young − generation who have been coupled on disc again and again, but who would complain?) surrounding Dutilleux’s quartet Ainsi la nuit (Thus the Night). Three very unique quartets, as each of their composers only wrote a single one. For the record, Debussy’s quartet still belongs to the 19th century as it was composed in 1893 in a language formally borrowing from Franck (even if the chord progressions already feel like classic Debussy), while Ravel’s inaugurates the 20th century in 1903 with Faurean notes in abundance… On the other hand, Dutilleux waited to achieve maturity (1976) to write his. An inescapable monument of 20th French chamber repertoire, played with finesse and transparency by Quatuor Hermès, cementing their place among the elite quartets of our time. © SM/Qobuz

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