Shostakovich / Haas - String Quartets 7-9 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Following on from their highly acclaimed first album featuring three quartets by Haydn, the Munich-based Goldmund Quartet now celebrates it's debut on the Berlin Classics tag. Florian Schötz, Pinchas Adt, Christoph Vandory and Raphael Paratore take a leap - not just in time, but from a musical point of view. Their programme here features Shostakovich's String Quartets Nos 3 and 9. Since making it's debut at the Prinzregententheater in Munich, this young and ambitious quartet, described by the Süddeutsche Zeitung as possessing Inchdecidedly appealing musicality with a truly individual signatureInch, has become popular on the music stages of Europe and further afield. The four musicians, who have known each other since their school days, gained significant musical impetus from members of the Alban Berg Quartet, as well as from the likes of Günter Pichler in Madrid and the Artemis Quartet in Berlin. Winning second prize and the Special Prize at the 2018 International Wigmore Hall String Competition for the best interpretation of a 20th-century quartet is proof that these four musicians know what they are doing when it comes to performing Shostakovich InchThe greatest challenge is that this music is so extreme. Elation, incredible downs, unbelievable sadness. You need to immerse yourself in these different emotional moods.Inch

The composers whose music is featured on the present album lived and worked in Czechoslovakia between the two world wars, and their fates were afflicted by the monstrous Nazi regime. Viktor Ullmann, who before WWII held the post of Kapellmeister at the New German Theatre, wrote Quartet No. 3 while he was detained at the Theresienstadt ghetto-camp. Hans Krása completed the Theme and Variations in 1936, yet he only saw it performed in Theresienstadt, along with his children's opera Brundibár. Erwin Schulhoff's Five Pieces reveal his zest for rhythm and dance, as well as his evidently having been inspired by the music of the Viennese salons, Italy and Spain. Pavel Haas's Quartet No. 2, dating from 1925, serves as vivid proof of the claim that the composer was the most gifted pupil of Leoš Janácek. In October 1944, Haas, Ullmann and Krása were among the thousands of Theresienstadt prisoners transported to Auschwitz, where they would be murdered in the gas chambers. The Bennewitz Quartet launched their international career following their victories at the prestigious competition in Osaka (2005) and the Prémio Paolo Borciani in Italy (2008). Ever since they have regularly performed at the world's most prominent venues and festivals. The music of the Theresienstadt composers has found in them splendid performers.

The Fitzwilliam String Quartet celebrates a remarkable milestone with this special fiftieth anniversary recording of Shostakovich's last three string quartets. Fittingly, this landmark recording will look back to the music which first propelled the Fitzwilliam to international prominence. Shostakovich entrusted the Fitzwilliam with the western premieres of his last three quartets (Nos. 13, 14, 15), and before long they had become the first ever group to perform and record all fifteen, winning many international awards along the way. The highly innovative String Quartet No.13 is notable for it's unique single-movement form and the virtuosic viola writing, which shines a spotlight on founding member Alan George. No.14, despite it's twelve-tone structure, is perhaps the most accessible of Shostakovich's late quartets with a wealth of identifiable melodies. The six movements of No.15 are profoundly melancholic and intimate, with the composer's obsession with death a clear influence. The Fitzwilliam's pre-eminence in the interpretation of these works has persisted Benjamin Britten reported after Shostakovich's death in 1975 that the composer had told him the Fitzwilliam were his 'preferred performers of my quartets'.