![]() ![]() ![]() Where the Artis caresses the gnarled Bergian lyricism, the Vogler attacks it with chilling brilliance and intensity. Two young European ensembles deserve attention for their recordings of one of the medium’s ultimate challenges, the “Lyric Suite” of Alban Berg: the Artis Quartet from Vienna (Orfeo 21 901) and the Vogler Quartet (RCA 60855) out of what used to be East Berlin. The Chester String Quartet, in residence at the University of Indiana in South Bend, makes a powerful impression with its vital, polished execution of three handsomely crafted American works of the 1930s, all unswervingly tonal and based on European models: the sweetly soulful, rather Gallic Third Quartet of Quincy Porter the Opus 11 Quartet of Samuel Barber, with its celebrated slow movement (the original of the “Adagio for Strings”), and the aggressive, dashing First Quartet of Walter Piston (Koch Classics 7069). The Clevelanders dance, drive and croon their way through Dvorak’s exquisite tunes and bracing rhythms with the verve of the best Czech ensembles of the recent past, and with a degree of technical proficiency increasingly rare among ensembles from the composer’s homeland. But all four-works of boggling complexity and imaginativeness, spanning the years 1951-1986 and intent on spotlighting individual voices rather than four-part homogeneity-become Juilliard property with the Sony set, which also includes the 1974 Duo played by Mann and pianist Christopher Oldfather. Mann and his various colleagues inspired the second and third of Elliott Carter’s four string quartets. With Mann as leader, the Juilliard has maintained its dedication to enlarging (via commissions) and maintaining (through frequent performance) a native repertory of music for its medium. The Juilliard Quartet retains one of its original members, first violinist Robert Mann, who founded the ensemble with William Schuman in 1946. ![]() ![]() The two are, however, distinct in that the Guarneri not only has the work in its bones but operates at a level of technical proficiency-interpretive judgments aside-beyond the wildest imaginings of the Britishers. Like the Guarneri recording, this one hardly seems overly studied. Its playing is thin-toned, often alarmingly out of tune and rhythmically sloppy. Just how virtuosic and dedicated the Guarneri remains can be learned the hard way, by listening to the Grieg in another new recording, this time played by an ensemble loftily named the English String Quartet (Unicorn-Kanchana 9092, with Schumann’s Quartet in A). (The recording also features Sibelius’ Quartet in D minor.) Now as in 1967 for RCA, the Guarneri takes the Grieg so much to heart, with playing of such intensity and vivacity as to make passing blemishes not only pardonable but ingratiating: a heated, damn-the-producer performance that projects the feeling of the concert hall rather than the recording studio. America’s senior string quartets, the Juilliard and the Guarneri, both seldom heard from on recordings, are back: the Guarneri Quartet, personnel unchanged since its founding 27 years ago, with a new edition of one of its golden oldies, Grieg’s gorgeous, emotionally uninhibited G-minor Quartet (Philips 426 286) and the Juilliard Quartet, performing Elliott Carter’s four string quartets on a two-CD set for Sony (47229). ![]()
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