Discography

Weinberg Vol. 4: String Quartets 6, 13, 15

Chandos Records

 CHAN 20180
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5059864228131
095115228128
July 2024
July 2024
Mieczyslaw Weinberg
Arcadia Quartet
Jonathan Cooper
Potton Hall, Dunwich, Suffolk
String quartet, wind quartet etc.

The Arcadia Quartet’s acclaimed survey of Weinberg’s String Quartets continues with this fourth volume containing Quartets Nos 6, 13, and 15. Quartet No. 6 was composed in 1946 in Bïkovo, a town some twenty miles from the south-eastern perimeter of Moscow. Weinberg dedicated it to his friend Georgiy Sviridov, whom he had met in Shostakovich’s circle. The Quartet is a summit of his early achievements, and its musical language is strikingly advanced in relation to traditional Soviet works in the genre. It was banned by the authorities, and as a result, Weinberg wrote no more quartets until after the death of his mentor Shostakovich, in 1975. String Quartet No. 13 was composed in 1977 and dedicated to the Borodin Quartet. Like Shostakovich’s Thirteenth Quartet, written seven years earlier, it comprises a single movement lasting some fourteen or fifteen minutes, making it the shortest of all Weinberg’s quartets. String Quartet No. 15, from 1979, is in many respects the most radically conceived of all Weinberg’s quartets – certainly its nine-movement design suggests so. In expressive terms, too, it is one of the most elusive. The movements carry no titles or expressive directions, and, as in the case of his previous two quartets, Weinberg confines himself to metronome indications, avoiding all specification of character.

Gramophone: Editor’s Choice: August 2024 | The best new classical recordings
‘In the fourth volume of their impressive Weinberg string quartets series, the Arcadia Quartet bring technical finesse and interpretative intensity to this trio of works: Quartets Nos 6, 13 and 15.’
Gramophone magazine, UK, July 12, 2024
https://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/article/editor-s-choice-august-2024-the-best-new-classical-recordings

Gramophone: ‘The Arcadia go a long way to conveying the essence of what could seem oblique or even intractable, enhanced with sound of demonstrable realism (…)”
by Richard Whitehouse, Gramophone magazine, UK, July 12, 2024
https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/weinberg-string-quartets-vol-4-arcadia-quartet