Beethoven, Mozart & Webern: String Quartets (2001)

The program looks like what was conventional in the 1970s and 1980s: Beethoven, Mozart, and the obligatory entry from the early 20th century, in this case Webern. But what you get from Germany's Hagen Quartet, here celebrating its 30th anniversary, is anything but conventional. The group members state that their aim is "to illustrate such things as pauses, fermati, dissonances, and certain extreme emotional phenomena as vividly as possible." Indeed, this is a set of hyper-expressive performances. For an example, look no ... Read More

The program looks like what was conventional in the 1970s and 1980s: Beethoven, Mozart, and the obligatory entry from the early 20th century, in this case Webern. But what you get from Germany's Hagen Quartet, here celebrating its 30th anniversary, is anything but conventional. The group members state that their aim is "to illustrate such things as pauses, fermati, dissonances, and certain extreme emotional phenomena as vividly as possible." Indeed, this is a set of hyper-expressive performances. For an example, look no further than the finale of Mozart's String Quartet in E flat major, K. 428, where the quartet blows through the rhythmic regularity of the opening phrases on the way to a total roller coaster ride of unexpected phrasing and constantly shifting treatments of the piece's already humorous and often intentionally deceptive pattern of silences and consequent-antecedent pairs. The extraordinarily un-dancelike minuet is likewise on the far edges of an ordinary conception of the work. The... Read Less

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2011, Myrios Classics UPC: 4260183510062 SACD See All