| Oktober 2016 Gramophone |
|---|
Kreisler, Schulhoff, Zemlinsky |
| Fritz Kreisler took his only string quartet very seriously indeed, and the Artis Quartet follow suit. Cellist Othmar Müller digs powerfully into his angular opening outburst; what follows banishes any preconceived notions of Viennese sentimentality or fin de siècle decadence. Kreisler wrote the quartet in 1919, after fighting and being injured on the Eastern Front, and the Artis Quartet’s earnestness suits it very well, without precluding a powerful sense of forward movement. Even in the finale – the one place where you might perhaps recognise the composer of Schön Rosmarin and Liebesfreud – they play it straight and bracingly direct. You could easily mistake this for a debut disc by a young and ambitious quartet fired by missionary zeal, rather than one with a distinguished four-decade history. The same energy and verve buzz through their account of Zemlinsky’s unpublished early E minor Quartet. I like the swing they give to the Scherzo’s Dvorak-like cross-rhythms, and the elegant way they shade into the Trio section. Schulhoff’s Funf Stücke of 1923 brings the programme into the Weimar era, and here too these Viennese players have the measure of the idiom: never overdoing the elements of parody in Schulhoff’s lopsided Waltz and distinctly Bohemian-sounding Milonga but colouring the music from within, with results that (in the second movement, a Serenade) evoke the world of Bartok’s ‘night music’. These are three-dimensional performances that make a passionate case for this music without patronising it: fresh and wholly convincing. Nimbus captures the group’s occasionally wiry tone in clear, detailed sound, slightly weighted towards the bass. A rewarding disc. Richard Bratby. |
| Back |