This recording features excellent quartet playing in the grand, classical manner:
Romantic music performed by the Escher String Quartet.
Composed between 1873 (Tchaikovsky) and 1893 (Dvorák), the three quartets gathered on this disc form a catalogue of unforgettable tunes and of emotions ranging from nostalgia to the most infectious joy.
Each of the three composers wrote more than one quartet – Dvorák’s list of works includes as many 14! – but the ones recorded here are by far their best-loved. A contributing fact is surely that they all three include slow movements that tug at every listener’s heartstrings. Especially Tchaikovsky’s Andante cantabile and Borodin’s Notturno have become favorites in their own right, and exist in arrangements for every possible combination of instruments.
But there is more to these works than the slow movements: throughout each quartet there is a wealth of melodic invention, rhythmic vitality and lyric neauty which the Escher’s know how to exploit to the full.
Here is the Escher Quartet in Dvorak’s “American” Quartet:
