POX: String Quartets

Bartók #3
Debussy #1
Ravel in F
Ligeti #2

must relisten to Lutoslawski, some Haydn, Schönberg, etc etc...

I'd pick Bartok's 4th and Shostakovich's 8th (obvious choices perhaps). I also really like R. Murray Schaefer's second, Schoenberg's 2nd, and LeJaren Hiller's 5th. I remember Britten's 2nd being really good (Did anyone do a bad second string quartet?) and need to go back to the late Beethoven quartets. I remember that Ligeti being good. I should listen again. I don't know the Debussy, Ravel, or any of Julio's choices.

Julio's choices are interesting, you should give them a listen. The Debussy and Ravel string quartets are GORGEOUS. Ravel's chamber arrangements in particular were always stunningly elegant.

There's so many great string quartets, it's hard to choose. I mean, Shostakovich has so many awesome ones. The 7th, the 15th... all of them, really. Sofiya Gubaydulina's string quartets are also ace. But I'd have to sit down and think long and hard to make a POX.

Yes, there are quite a few to cram into 10, but I had this thread in my head for ages and had to get it out with only one cup of coffee when it probably needed three. A few definites would be "Nobody's jig" by Finnissy (for the opening moments), Holliger's "String quartet" (did you get a copy of this in the end Sundar?), Webern and Berg, but this will all need a few hours of listening and consideration.

"Did anyone do a bad second string quartet?"

Great q! I find it quite hard getting into Ferkneyhough's quartets but I end up listening to his 2nd (no problems with many of his other works).

The Debussy and Ravel string quartets are GORGEOUS.

Yeah they're TOTAL CANDY, which I dunno may have unfairly earned them some hmph among too-seriously-minded ppl?

It seems I am a sucker for partly or wholly pizzicato str4tet movements.

Penderecki: no.1 (actually his second - another one! - but the first is an unpublished student thing)

Beethoven: A minor, op.132 (people say the C#, op.131 is the one, but this just kills me every time)

Kurtag: 12 Microludes (Hommage a Andras Mihaly; there's an ECM CD of K's string quartets which is essential)

Bartok: no.5

Ferneyhough: Sonatas for String Quartet - Quite early Ferneyhough, but I was listening to these with the score the other day and they're incredibly beautiful.

Plus some empty boxes for all that Haydn, Mozart and Schubert I've not got round to yet... ON what little I've heard, probably a Weinberg in there too.

Anyone heard either of Lachenmann's later two quartets? I only know Gran Torso, but it's yet to make an impression on me.

Okay, I just woke up but I can type some that pop into my head...

Shostakovich: SQ 15 , 13, 11 , 3;
Beethoven: Op. 130,131;
Schoenberg: SQ 2;
Ben Johnston: SQ no. 4 "amazing grace" (microtonal);
Gloria Coates: SQ 5 (esp. the first movement "Though Time") and SQ 7 "Angels" ;
Alan Hovhaness' string quartet "The Ancient Tree" is one I really like...

You might not like Glass but I really enjoy his SQ no. 5. It's on a Kronos disc of his SQs which I like a lot in general. Schnittke's SQ 2 is awesome, especially the 2nd mvt, which is the most frantic and violent SQ movement ever possibly. Another dark and powerful one is --- Krzysztof Meyer - SQ 8. That reminds of Ligeti's 2 SQs, which are just masterpieces. Stravinsky's 3 pieces for SQ are beautiful. Ruth Crawford Seeger's SQ is an awesome atonal one...

ooh! Witold Lutoslawski's SQ is amazing. Per Nørgård's 6 quartets are really inventive and interesting... Penderecki's SQ 1 and 2 are great sonorist crazy pieces :D

I'll come up with more later.

Shostakovich complete string quartets by Rubio Quartet. Emusic!

Actually, the first movement of the Gloria Coates is called "Through Time." Oh, yeah, and it's still fantastic.

has anyone heard the first Glass quartet, circa '65 or so? I don't think it's been released, but read about and very curious.

Don't know if this is any use to you Dominique, but the Smith Quartet are playing Glass's complete quartets (including the elusive 1st) next month in London:

http://www.almeida.co.uk/production_details/production_details.aspx?code=21

this is v. hard tbh.

bartok's 4th and 6th, haydn op. 33 no. 2, op. 77 no 1 (which i enjoyed this morning on radio 3), dvorak's 10th, all the webern qts, schoenberg's, 3 and 4 by revueltas, beethoven's no. 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, villa-lobos's set of 15 (!), all of mozart's later qts. but you know, it's hard to consider this and exclude string trios and quintets. mozart's string quintets are amazing.

re morton feldman: i was digesting the 2nd qt for a while recently. while i can enjoy - and meditate with - the music, i'm sort of slightly unhappy considering it as a string qt alongside others: it's like comparing a four stanza lyric with/to paradise lost. to me it's more like a voiceless opera really.

AMG lists an album by the Duke Quartet that includes the Glass String Quartet #1, dleone.

http://www.amazon.com/Barber-String-Quartet-Op-11-Dvorak/dp/B000003VXV

It's this one. The last three tracks are the 1st Glass Quartet.

have been listening almost exclusively to string quartets the last couple of days. Ligeti, Bartok probably tops on the list today, but currently listening to Schnittke #2, and am being AMAZED. The short pieces (1914) for string quartet by Stravinksy are pretty awesome too, was unaware of them before today. Waiting for Scelsi quartets to download, am very curious.

I have the Shostakovich set in the other room, but am liking things a bit more on the broken-shards-of-glass end of things at the moment. :)

the scelsi quartets are some of my favourite thingss, the first is elegant second viennese school epigonism and from there he floated away to his own place

it's also worth finding his string orchestra pieces

Those Schnittke string quartets really are fantastique.

Recommending Georg Friedrich Haas' quartets as well as Lachenmann's.

Oh dear I never completed this :-(

Schnittke's string quartets are so incredible, not otherwise a fan. +1 on the Melchiorre recommendation! So amazing.
You can't pick only 10 string quartets that is ridiculous like "pick ten snowflakes"

P.S. Ravel, Bartok, Debussy, Schnittke and Beethoven are also super popular because they are so idiomatically well-written, i.e. fun to play, which is a major decider on why a quartet will play the thing. Shostakovich, Ligeti not so much, Feldman obv not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeaCGa9eHvU

Owen, have you not heard Schnittke's Piano Quintet? How about his choral concerto? His Concerto Grosso No. 3? I can't see you not liking those tbh.

Also, how gorgeous is this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRiY8tQ0GuU

also listening to henri dutilleux's Ainsi la Nuit for quartet. I was unaware of this composer before last week, but this is really good. Kind of Messiaen-like in places (tho I have not found anything of his for string quartet), post-Bartok, post-Schoenberg. really economical writing, mixture of techniques in each piece, where sometimes it's hard to believe only 4 people are playing. Because of this piece I went out and found some of this orchestral music, which seems more conventional.

Yes, Ainsi de la Nuit is absolutely beautiful.

-de

tho on orchestral work, have only sampled. i want it to be good!

It is! I've liked everything.

Beethoven Op. 133 & Schubert Death & the Maiden have to be on any quartet POX list I think & yeah concur w/Shostakovich No. 7

The thing about Shostakovich quartets is that Yes They Are Lovely but the "behind the Iron Curtain" sound of Shostakovich 7 is far better represented in his symphonies. I have to revisit the Shostakovich quartets to find the one that is all "puppet dance" but I much prefer that to Shostakovich 7

Every time I've seen 7 performed live it is the sound of four musicians struggling to sound enormous and instead sounding like an accordion.

Splitting hairs really. I do love the "everybody I love has died" era of Shostakovich symphonies and esp that piano quintet.

And can we for a hot minute talk about Bartok quartets? 6 has always damaged my brain a'cause I love the last movement so much... that cello pizzicato at the very end is Bartok's Finest Moment... but I hate everything else about it, esp. the fussy structuring and that 'orrible, 'orrible Burlesque movement

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPFF7WaCfj4

Weirdly Fiery Furnaces "Tropical Iceland" came up when I searched for it

Well, you're right about the Piano Quintet being awesome, esp. this movement

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsW63nITB-A

Owen, definitely hearing you about shostakovich quartets right now. I was listening to some of the later ones the other day, and they do sound like symphonic writing (and esp shostakovich symphonic writing, with drastic, albeit elongated shifts in intensity)-- as opposed to the perfect quartet capsules of the debussy and ravel quartets, and i think also the bartoks. will listen to 6 again tomorrow, but one of the things I like about his writing is how at home it is w/the 4 players. having never written a quartet, i can only guess, but it does seem like the most difficult thing about it is having 4 lines of music communicate the intensity/complexity of life (for lack of a less lame metaphor). everything is exposed, emotional core is bare for all to hear

OK! I think of it as social music, tho. String quartets are social, see, four portable instruments, apartment friendly instrumentation. Get tipsy and read it with friends. So sure, massive hits like Carter #3 and Feldman #2 are Great Works, but...

Oh, not sociable enough for yr dinner parties?

Dutilleux is fantastic, there is a terrific piece of his for solo piano that I heard on the radio once but have never been able to track down: the most deceptively light post-war composer imaginable

The bourgeois connotation of "dinner party music" is already rendered moot by the fact that we're discussing quartets, but nice try anyway.

xyzzzz__, if you dug that, there's a great comp w/ his collected piano works with Anne Queffélec performing.

they are not social in my bldg, they are fodder for angry neighbors!

I guess I just view str quartets as really hard to write (esp as I am not a string player). Like a good solo piano piece, I think they say a lot about a composer, especially harmonically

Chamber music has had a "dinner party" function, hasn't it?

When I'm checking out a composer I'll always try to hear either a piece for solo piano or a string quartet.

I'll try and look out for that CD, T.

Gloria Coates String Quartet No. 5, 3rd mvmnt "In the Fifth Dimension" always kicks my ass. Glissandi ahoy. Sounds like a heated argument between two distinct parts of strings, you can even hear them reaching their boiling point.

Busted out Xenakis' Tetras after reading Alex Ross' piece on him in the New Yorker. So, so nice.

Fauré
Bartók - No. 4
Beethoven - Op. 132
Janáček - No. 2
Rihm - No. 3
Schoenberg - No. 2
Sibelius - Voces Intimae
Xenakis - Tetras
Shostakovich - No. 7
Honegger - No. 2

crossposting to this thread (even though it only garnered one mention here)

Any chance you could recommend a recording of Schubert's string quartet no. 14 ('Death and the Maiden')? Listening to David Lang's song cycle Death Speaks has me curious to hear it...

― bernard snowy, Friday, April 15, 2016 7:11 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't have a total standout frontrunner choice for schubert SQ 14. I usually play Quartetto Italiano. Current quartets I am enamored of are the Ebene, the Jerusalem, and the Artemis-- if any of them have recorded schubert SQ 14 I would want to hear it.

Just spun quartetto italiano -- can reaffirm that they are great in this piece.

My recommendation is for the Belcea Quartet's recording - they really nail the drama of it, and the cold beauty of the slow movement. Great sounding recording too. Comes on a 2-disc with amazing versions of the Quintet and SQ 15 as well; it's one of my favorite chamber records.