Weinberg: String Quartets Vol. 3: Nos. 6, 8 & 15

Quatuor Danel

CPO 777 393-2

The String Quartet No. 6 of 1946 represents one of the high points in the extraordinary chamber oeuvre created by Mieczyslaw Weinberg during his early Soviet years. It was on the »index of forbidden works.« Although the prohibition was soon lifted, nine years would pass before Weinberg would return to this instrumentation. The demands placed by the quartet on the listener far exceed what Shostakovich (or Weinberg himself) had written in the quartet genre prior to this point. The work operates within a symphonic framework, and its overall structure is just as flexible as the individual movements themselves. The Quartet No. 8 composed more than a decade later, in 1959, consists of a single movement more or less clearly divided into three parts. The solemn adagio opening the work functions in the manner of a slow introduction preparing for the main movement proper. The Quartet No. 15 of 1980 is tops among all of Weinberg’s quartets when it comes to delight in experimentation – also in view of its overall form of nine movements. Once again the Quatuor Danel performs »with absolutely incessant, often probingly persistent intensity and at the same time with uncommon subtlety, with an impressive wealth of colors and contrasts« (klassik-heute. com 10 / 08).

CD

8.10.2009

761203739325