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The Sibelius quartet comes from 1909, between the Third and Fourth Symphonies. Emerson gives you the feeling of tragic resignation. It's made for the Emerson's cool approach, like Danish Modern furniture.
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In context, it evokes the grief at the loss of a noble life. The brief At the bier of a young artist, written on the death of a painter friend and played at the funeral, taps an altogether deeper vein of emotion, running the familiar Nielsen dichotomy of chromatic anguish and drop-dead-gorgeous folk-like clarity. They are attractive, well-crafted affairs, but certainly without the visionary qualities of the symphonies. Nielsen wrote four string quartets around the turn of the century, probably for himself (a violinist) and his friends to play. Nevertheless, the Emerson gradually won me over, mainly through superb, intelligent playing. After all, the composer had written it in response to a crisis in his marriage, reflected in the sharp alternations from storms to wildflower tenderness. "Grieg needs passionate commitment to the beauty of his ideas, rather than to be turned into another Mendelssohn," I thought. The Emerson gives a surprisingly elegant, detailed reading – its very elegance throwing me a curve. The melodic invention is, predictably, abundant and pure genius. Obviously, Grieg has conceived the quartet as a whole. A motto-theme – similar to the opening notes of his piano concerto – runs through every movement, with neat rhythmic and modal variations. Furthermore, Grieg keeps an impressive hold on architecture. Grieg, a pianist rather than a string player, may translate piano writing to string textures, but the results always "sound." The writing is mostly chordal, with just enough contrapuntal leavening to keep interest, although in the finale, Grieg achieves real rhythmic independence for each instrument. The work's passion and melodic beauty reduce such concerns to triviality. I've since found out a few things and can now see flaws, but they don't seem to matter a whole lot to me. Of course, I knew nothing about quartet, or even string, writing at the time. As a lad, I first heard the Juilliard in the work and loved it immediately. Even star string quartets who have made wonderful recordings have fought among themselves over whether they should spend time with it at all. The Grieg, of course, gets the same lack of respect as most of his large-scale compositions. None of the composers' reputations depend on these works, although they all wrote, in my opinion, masterpieces (if unusual masterpieces) in the genre. Even something as striking to our ears as Mozart's "Dissonance" quartet says more about music than about Mozart or about extra-musical ideas.Īll three works on this CD's program to some extent indulge in biography, the post-Beethoven side of the divide. Writers usually cite Beethoven as the key to the divide. Summary for the Busy Executive: Sensitive, slightly cool accounts.įrom their origins in the English fantasia, string quartets begin in sociable entertainment and end in philosophy and autobiography.