The RIAS Amadeus Quartet Recordings - Modernism The RIAS Amadeus Quartet Recordings, Vol. IV

Celebrated for their performances of the Viennese Classics, the Amadeus Quartet dominated the British chamber music scene for over 40 years and was one of the most respected ensembles of the twentieth century. The Quartet championed the music of their contemporaries, and for the radio they recorded string quartets written by the major English composers of their time, Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett. The Hungarian composer Mátyás Seiber introduced the Amadeus Quartet to the works of his fellow countryman Béla Bartók. By recording Henry Purcell’s string fantasias, they followed references between Britten and the cradle of English chamber music. For volume IV in the RIAS Amadeus Quartet Recordings series the ensemble plays twentieth century Hungarian andd English works. The Baroque composer Henry Purcell is also represented - as a reference point for Benjamin Britten’s Second String Quartet. This edition substantially broadens the view of the Amadeus Quartet and demonstrates the inquisitiveness and assuredness with which Norbert Brainin and his three colleagues explored the music of their contemporaries. Under the direction of Michael Tippett, a group of young composers, including Mátyás Seiber and Peter Racine Fricker, wrote new string quartets for the Amadeus Quartet. Apart from Michael Tippett, it was first and foremost Benjamin Britten who, around 1950, established his reputation as Britain’s most renowned composer. His Second String Quartet was conceived as a reminiscence of Henry Purcell, a progenitor of English music, for the 250th anniversary of his death. Two of Purcell’s string fantasias and a chaconne, on which Britten had based his work, have therefore been included in this edition, and are released for the first time in the Amadeus Quartet’s interpretation. The Hungarian composer Mátyás Seiber - who, like the members of the Amadeus Quartet, had to emigrate to Britain after the Nazis had seized power in Germany - wrote his Quartetto lirico in the spirit of the Viennese School, particularly that of Alban Berg. He also championed the string quartets of Béla Bartók, whose Fourth and Sixth Quartets are also available for the first time as performances by the Amadeus Quartet. Audite’s excellent series of RIAS Amadeus Quartet Recordings is scheduled to include six volumes, exclusively presenting performances released for the first time on CD. As always, the ensemble’s performances on this two-disc set of recordings from 1950-1956 demonstrate superb musicianship as well as the Amadeus Quartet’s customary warmth and exuberance.

Captured variously between 1950 and 1956, the Amadeus compensate for the occasional rough edge with gripping musical intensity in Britten's and Tippett's Second Quartets and Bartók's Fourth and Sixth.

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One of my fondest concert memories from the late 1960s is of hearing the Amadeus Quartet in recital at a north London school playing Bartok's Fourth Quartet, a work that on first acquaintance thrilled me to the core, though my first record of the work – a very different sort of performance – was by the original Fine Arts Quartet (Saga LP, Music & Arts CD). Sadly the Amadeus never recorded a Bartok cycle so the appearance in the fourth volume of Audite's collection of the quartet's 'RIAS recordings' of the Fourth and Sixth Quartets, both recorded a good decade before I saw that Hampstead performance, is particularly valuable.

The second CD opens with Matyas Seiber's Third Quartet, Quartetto lirico, which is noticeably influenced by Bartok, the Sixth Quartet especially, and the Amadeus play it marvellously well. The opening minute or so of Bartok's Fourth sounds a little uncertain: the pizzicato Scherzo is rather measured and the wildcat finale lacks the sort of animal vigour that the Juilliards, the Veghs and indeed the Fine Arts brought to It. The performance's highlight is Martin Lovett's passionately rhapsodic cello solo in the slow third movement. The Sixth's first movement is at times rhythmically ambiguous, as if the players were just a few short steps short of mastering its form, whereas they're nearer the target in the dry, even OTT humour that fills the two middle movements. Best by far is the closing Mesto, music filled with profound sadness, a sadness that the quartet members, or the three of them who had been exiled from Europe, will have felt as deeply as the composer himself. Ironically it's the all-British first disc that finds them truly in their element, the Second Quartets of Britten and Tippett, music they seem to connect with intuitively. Both performances are memorably expressive.

Nach der Aufarbeitung der Wiener Klassik (Mozart, Beethoven und Schubert) widmet sich die jüngste Veröffentlichung historischer Aufnahmen des ‘Amadeus Quartett’ dem britischen und ungarischen Repertoire des 20. Jahrhunderts. Auf CD 1 sind jeweils das 2. Quartett von Britten und Tippett eingespielt sowie drei Werke von Henry Purcell.

CD 2 beinhaltet das ‘Quartetto lirico’ von Matyas Seiber und die Quartett 4 und 6 von Bela Bartok. Wir befinden uns in Zeiten des Umbruchs nach zwei Weltkriegen, die die Menschheit komplett aus dem Gleichgewicht geworfen und die Suche nach neuen kulturellen Referenzen und Orientierungen unabdingbar gemacht hat.

Sämtliche eingespielten Kompositionen sind Zeugnisse dieser Suche, die dennoch nie ganz ohne Referenzen an die klassisch-romantische Tradition – bei Britten sogar an die Barockzeit – auskommt.

Das ‘Amadeus Quartett’ deutet diese Nachklänge zerbrochener Welten mit fesselnder musikalischer Tiefe – manchmal scharfzüngig, vorwiegend jedoch zart, mit fiebriger Intensität (z.B. das wunderbare Cello-Solo im 4. Bartok-Quartett). Zieht man zudem die Aufnahmebedingungen in Betracht – ein quasi Live-Mitschnitt ohne die Möglichkeit kosmetischer Nachbesserungen – liefern diese hervorragend überarbeiteten Studio-Aufnahmen aus den 50er Jahren einen weiteren Beweis der Ausnahmestellung des Amadeus Quartett.

Gripping performances of unusual musical insight and depth.