Caetani / Alauda Quartet - Caetani: Two String Quartets - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Their third duo album on Signum Classics, Viktoria Mullova and Alasdair Beatson perform Beethoven's Sonatas 2 and 10. Uniquely for the A Major sonata Op 12 No 2 they use a copy of an 1805 Walter (a Viennese fortepiano), and for Sonata No 10 op. 96 they use a copy of an 1819 graf, both by Paul McNulty. Together with violin strung with gut, these instruments are what Beethoven's music craves, giving a rich texture and distinct colours between the registers. ? Inch'Optimistic, ebullient and inexhaustibly inventive' is how the pianist Alasdair Beatson describes the three Beethoven sonatas on this disc - and that is exactly how they come across in these performances with the violinist Viktoria Mullova. The sense of rustic abandon they create in this work is infectiously gleeful.Inch - The Guardian ? Recording ? Performance InchTheir dazzling playing captures all the music's wit and brillianceInch - BBC Music Magazine

Saúl Bitran writes of the present InchRuperto Chapí's String Quartet No. 3 could well be subtitled Tragic Quartet. Here's a work of a stormy nature, containing atmospheres of drama, anguish and loneliness. Out of the four quartets written by the composer, this is perhaps the one which has the least Spanish features... String Quartet No. 4, in B minor, was premiered by the Cuarteto Francés on February 22nd, 1907, and was dedicated by the composer to Inchmy very dear friend and disciple Manuel Manrique de LaraInch. On that evening's printed program it was mentioned that InchChapí continues with the aesthetic tendency shown on his previous quartets. Without resorting to specific popular forms, the composer manages to give his work a genuinely national character, picturesque and free, dressing his own thoughts with rhythms and procedures of natural and traditional harmonies. The form matches, in general terms, that of a traditional string quartet but, within it, the composer is able to transit with absolute independence, and to present the thematic elements according to his own phantasy and to the whims of his personal temperament.Inch

The anthology wants based on lesser known works document the importance of Haydn's string quartets, thus enabling the interested music lover some musical discoveries, the most in the context of overall shots would be possible otherwise. For this project could be won with the Schuppanzigh Quartet one of the most prestigious gambling on period instruments quartet formations. In the second episode, the arc from early String Quartet No.4 Op.9 stretched over the InchmediumInch Op.65 No.5 to Op.77 No.1, the penultimate consummate quartet Haydn.