Search - Schubert, Vienna Konzerthaus Quartet :: Schubert: Complete String Quartets; Vienna Konzerthaus Quartet

Superb rendition to the maestro !

Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 09/17/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The musician involved in these performances belonged to the String sections of the Vienna Philarmonic and these recordings are of the middle fifties . And notice this was , perhaps the golden years of the Vienna Philarmonic . Erich Kleiber , Clemen Kraus , Wilhelm Furtwangler , Karl Bohm , Bruno Walter , Istvan Kertesz and Carl Suricht are not precisely directors you can finf easily in these actual ages .

I got these recordings in vynil and I must confess that besides the enormous and complex knock out performances of Chiringilian Quartet , the nuance , the elegance and the aristocratic refinement interpretative of this ensemble is just years light from the others performers .

To play these quartets demands from you to be involve for the most enchanted mood of what Schubert means : you have to be inmersed in his landerers , in his last works , the Quintet op. 163 and the posthumous sonata D. 960 .

You have to emphasize the fresh air , the nuance , the lyricism , the tenderness , the arresting presence of the nature and above all to remark the freshness in the performing .

It is a real challenge for any ensamble to translate every little deatil in this sense , and unless you are member of the Italian Quartet , Lindsay Quartet , The borodin Quartet , The old ensemble Amadeus Quartet , The Buadapest String Quartet or the Vegh ensamble it seems veru hard for you to pevail in the musical memory of the listener .

Acquire this whole set . It is outstanding . And adittionally you will feel the Schubert idiomatism through every one of these performings ."

A Venerable Set Worth Acquiring

Johannes Climacus | Beverly, Massachusetts | 09/15/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I remember the Vienna Konzerthaus Quartet with great fondness from its numerous recordings of standard repertoire for the Westminster label during the early LP era. I hadn't realized until recently that they had recorded a complete Schubert cycle, and that it had been reissued on CD. I was therefore delighted to find this release available from the Amazon website. The VKQ are perfectly suited to this repertoire. Their thoughtful, expansive and deeply expressive approach to Schubert is made possible by perfectly chosen tempos (expansive enough in slow movements to let the pathos tell), an intuitive grasp of Viennese late-classical style, and an uncanny responsiveness not only to the music behind the notes, but also to one another. This is how chamber music should sound, but rarely does in an age of high-profile professionalism. Hearing the VKQ is like eavesdropping on a private conversation, indeed a profoundly unsettling one that puts us in touch with our mortal condition in precisely the way that Schubert, that most death-haunted of composers, clearly intended. To be sure, the early quartets, though pleasant, are hardly profound utterances; they contain numerous infelicities of style and structure that betray the young composer's struggles with this most demanding of idioms. Yet even in these immature works, there are plenty of ravishing moments, sudden turns of phrase or unexpected modulations that cause one to catch one's breath. Where the VKQ really come into their own, however, is with the mature masterpieces, from no. 12 onwards. Theirs is the most melancholy rendition I have yet heard of the A-minor, the most harrowing of the "Death and the Maiden," and the most probing of the enigmatic final work in G-major. Over the years I have heard numerous ensembles do these works in concert and on recordings (including the Guarnieri, the Italians, the Hungarians, the Budapest, and the Melos) and these venerable versions by the VKQ outstrip them all in depth and sensitivity, if not always in tidiness of ensemble.



The best news of all is that throughout this set the original monaural recordings have been splendidly transferred to the digital medium. I was astonished at the presence, natural balance and realism that the engineers have managed to retrieve from those opaque-sounding Westminster LP's (at least that's what I remember from the few VKQ recordings I acquired in my youth). It sounds for all the world as if the ensemble is playing "right there in front of you."



A worthwhile venture in every respect to resurrect these wonderful old recordings--don't miss them if you are a chamber music lover who delights in ensembles that have a distinctive character (in this case, an "old world," echt-Viennese approach to Schubert that, to the best of my knowledge, has long since vanished)."

Schubert's Miraculous Quartets

Ronald B. Ein | 11/19/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Close to fifty years ago I purchased an LP of the Vienna Konzerthaus Quartet playing early Schubert quartets. (The vinyl is long-buried in a carton in the garage, but I think the quartets were Nos. 5 and 7.) At the time I knew little to nothing about Schubert, other than that WQXR played his symphonies, piano pieces, songs, and some quartets. The sound of the quartets has always been part of my sonic memory. All these years later, having spent decades playing chamber music, including the oft-played Nos. 12-15, I purchased the complete cd set of Schubert Quartets originally recorded in the 1950s by the Vienna Konzerthaus Quartet.



Superb notes tell us that Schubert wrote the first ten quartets for family play and intended to destroy them. But the opening phrase of No. 1 immediately tells us that this is not a child's nice, but not very interesting, effort. No, the opening measures of this early piece already are full of mystery and that ineffable Schubert sadness. The early quartets certainly merit more exposure, even if they do not match up to general merits of Beethoven's "early" quartets. How could they?



The cd set is monophonic, which sounds a bit odd at first, but has a presence more typical of vinyl and usually missing from cds. The playing is elegant, careful, and cultivated, as one might expect of a Viennese ensemble. In the late quartets (Nos. 12-15) this approach seems a bit tame, compared to the drama of the Lindsays or Yo-Yo Ma, Kremer, Kashkashian and Phillips. Still, this set allows us to enjoy all the Schubert quartets as played by an ensemble fully in the Vienna tradition and at a reasonable price.



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