| June 2006The coupling of
the Grieg and Sibelius Quartets is as self-recommending and richly justified as the far
more frequent coupling of those by Debussy and Ravel, and this new issue from DG makes an
especially strong case for it. As in their recording of the Debussy and Ravel, the
Emersons seem to have rejected perceived notions about the respective composers in favor
of allowing the character of these particular works to arise from the music itself.
Sibelius labeled his Quartet "Voces intimae," and DG has applied that
heading -- in English translation, "Intimate Voices" -- to this package. Anthony
Burton’s annotation, headed "Northern Voices," points out that Grieg
had in mind an achievement of "breadth, flight of imagination, and above all
sonority" in his Quartet, and that the Sibelius "suggests a particular concern
with the medium of chamber music as opposed to orchestral music." This indeed seems
to be the focus of the Emersons’ sensitive, compassionate yet powerful performances,
allowing Grieg and Sibelius to take their places in the broader community of the string
quartet. The Nordic character, the folk flavor, the brooding solitude are all incidental
to the more universal impressions of vigor, poignancy, humor and tenderness.
The four-minute elegy by Carl Nielsen, composed for the
funeral of a painter the composer had known, has become the Danish equivalent of
Barber’s somewhat more expansive Adagio for Strings. Its presence here,
between the splendid accounts of the Grieg and Sibelius, must raise thoughts of an
eventual Emerson set of Nielsen’s four quartets. The recording itself is warm, well
defined, and very well suited to the material.
GO BACK TO:
|
Grieg - String Quartet in G
minor; Sibelius - Quartet in D minor; Nielsen - "At the Bier of a
Young Artist"
