MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

Buy through MusicWeb
for £12 postage paid World-wide.

Musicweb Purchase button

Sound Samples and Downloads

Alexander ZEMLINSKY (1871-1942)
String Quartet No. 1 in A major, Op. 4 (1896) [26:20]
String Quartet No. 2, Op. 15 (1915) [38:18]
Artis Quartett Wien
rec. Concert Hall of the Nimbus Foundation, 15-18 December 1997, Stereo. DDD
NIMBUS NI 5563 [64:48]

Experience Classicsonline



 
It’s good that the Artis’s performances of Zemlinsky’s quartets have now definitively returned to the catalogues. Water may have flowed under the bridge since their 1997 recordings, not least the Schoenberg Quartet’s survey of all the quartet music on Chandos CHAN 9772(2), but the Viennese quartet’s performances stand up remarkably well. They also compare favourably with those of the LaSalle Quartet who were, in the 1970s, the only viable proponents for these works.
 
What remains so good about the Artis’s playing is not simply its resilience of rhythm and the sense of colours it evokes, but the energy it generates too. This is certainly the case in the A major quartet of 1896, a work that doesn’t sound very much like the ‘Zemlinsky’ that we may have come to know from his Expressionist writing. Indeed it’s as well to be reminded that Zemlinsky wasn’t a native Viennese, and in that he was hardly alone. His father was a Slovak who had gravitated to the imperial capital, and there remains in his son’s early music something of that ethos, one which will sound to most like a Bohemian-cum-Slavic strain. It’s exemplified in the intensity of the Allegretto’s B section, a characteristic example of his folkloric influence, but it’s there in the opening movement too. The urgency of this movement comes as a fine contrast, whilst the finale sounds highly engaging in the Artis’s hands.
 
There was a gap of very nearly two decades before Zemlinsky embarked on his second quartet. There are good biographical reasons why this work is so much more pronounced in respect of its heightened emotional drama. These principally concerned the fact that Zemlinsky’s sister, Mathilde, who had married Arnold Schoenberg in 1901, subsequently had an affair with the young painter, Richard Gerstl. When Mathilde returned to Schoenberg, principally for the sake of her children, Gerstl hanged himself. The relationship between Schoenberg and Zemlinsky took a buffeting and its resonance was strongly active when Zemlinsky wrote his complex, highly contrapuntal, polyrhythmic, and virtuosic Op.15.
 
It’s cast in one vast 40 minute movement, though it’s fairly obviously sub-divided into sections, and Nimbus separately tracks them. It opens with tumultuous complexity and a palpable sense of dislocation, before moving on to a truly desolate Andante mosso section which opens with despairing soliloquies, but also contains more loquacious flurries, and a final thwacking pizzicato that leads into the ensuing section marked simply ‘Schnell’. This is slithery and terse though the music does stabilise in the Im selben Tempo passage, only to relapse into brittle drive, then thins in texture as the slow final section appears. Thus the work ends quietly, uneasily. It is a deeply serious quartet, a study in oscillating states of being as well as being splendidly crafted and superbly maintained throughout its long length.
 
Once again the Artis responds with full bodied Viennese tone, but also quick-witted rhythmic spring. Given that they are also well recorded, with finely annotated notes, the Artis still rank very high in this repertoire and are worthy of serious consideration.
 
Jonathan Woolf

See also review by Gavin Dixon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.


 

> Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.