Andrés ISASI (1890-1940)
String Quartet 'no.0' in E minor, op. posth. 83 (1908) [24:13]
String Quartet no.2 in A minor, op.27 (1920) [30:31]
Isasi Quartet
rec. Château d'Arcangues, France, 14-17 June 2010. DDD
NAXOS SPANISH CLASSICS 8.572463 [55:00]
Spanish Basque composer Andrés Isasi made his first appearance on Naxos
nearly a decade ago (8.557584, review),
so this sequel has been a long time coming. However, two further volumes towards
this complete quartets series are promised and have indeed already been recorded
by the Isasi Quartet. As the accompanying notes explain, there are three more
full works extant, as well as a three-movement quartet that was likely unfinished,
a few fragments and two stand-alone short pieces for the medium. With luck
those discs will pack them all in and be more generously furnished than this
one.
Written just over a decade apart, these two quartets are fairly similar in
essence, if less so in practice. Elegance, wistfulness, folk influences, memorable
melodies, minor keys and a lack of pretentiousness - these are prominent features
of both. As the promotional blurb says, Grieg and Dvořák are two
of the more obvious references, but so is someone like Weingartner in the
more Germanically oriented A minor work. There is at any rate hardly a trace
of Spanish or Basque nationalism in these works - lending Naxos's 'Spanish
Classics' ticket a touch of irony. Despite their name, the Isasi Quartet are
a primarily German ensemble, an attribute that fits rather well with Isasi's
style. This is an impressive debut for Naxos by the Quartet: sympathetic and
thoughtful, technically adept and cogent.
Sound quality is pretty good, clean and spacious with just a hint of perforation
at the edges. One minor complaint is that the final milliseconds of each track
have had natural reverberation quickly killed by human intervention. This
happens surprisingly frequently even in modern recordings where extreme shortage
of space is rarely an issue; only producers will know why they do such a pointless
thing, but at least in this case the effect is minuscule.
Richard Whitehouse's descriptive notes are typically informative and well
written. Roll on, volume two.
Byzantion
Collected reviews and contact at artmusicreviews.co.uk
Elegance, wistfulness, folk influences, memorable melodies, minor keys and
a lack of pretentiousness.
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