Author Topic: Bartock String Quartets  (Read 3560 times)

Offline richidoo

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Bartock String Quartets
« on: October 29, 2008, 11:44:01 AM »


I got this new Bartok cycle last week. All 6 of Bela artok's string quartets. It is AWESOME, one of my top 5 best CDs for string quartet music. I sat downto listen to one quartet (4 movements) but I could not tear myself away, and the whole 1st CD played quartets 1-3. Bartok is a bit challenging compared to more romantic composers, but extremely rewarding. It is complex and tonally sophisticated, but it never gets tiresome of boring or fatiguiing. It just washes over you in waves of rich strong harmony, from which emerged the music changing approaches of Tatum, Powell and Monk, and later Beetles, Steely Dan, EWF, etc. When I was a kid I bought a cassette of one of the quartets and hated it. "Not music," etc....  When you add together the harmony of the composition with the detail of the tone compingh from the instruments, this is why I love high end audio. This is why I have Beryllium midrange. The combination of extreme instrumental tonal detail playing intense harmonies is what it's all about for me. JACKPOT!

Emerson plays boldly and precisely. Acoustics are excellent, recording is incredible, instruments sound great, interpretation is serious but there is none of the typical classical arrogance and mellodrama. All around a really great record.

No wonder is received Gramophone album of the year 1990, and Grammy award (best chamber recording?)1989.

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=1636