FREE UK SHIPPING OVER £35!

Britten - Complete String Quartets       | Brilliant Classics 9168

Britten - Complete String Quartets

New Item

Label: Brilliant Classics

Cat No: 9168

Barcode: 5029365916820

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 2

Genre: Chamber

Release Date: 17th May 2010

This product has now been deleted. Information is for reference only.

Contents

About

In this 2CD set, Benjamin Britten's early Simple Symphony is heard in the composer’s arrangement for quartet. It is based on early works, including his 9th piano sonata of 1926, and the 3rd suite for piano of 1925 – both composed when Britten was just 12 years old.

Britten composed three mature quartets spanning his creative life, and one unnumbered work dating from 1931. Britten returned to this student work in 1971 whist recovering from a heart operation, and revised it for performance at the 1975 Aldeburgh Festival.

The 1st Quartet dates from 1941, the 2nd Quartet from 1945. The 2nd was premiered on the actual day that Purcell died some 250 years earlier, and was Britten’s second contribution to the Purcell Anniversary, after The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. It’s a powerful work reflecting the composer’s shock at seeing first hand the concentration camps after the fall of the Nazis. Britten toured Germany with Yehudi Menuhin and what he saw left a lasting impression on him.

The 3rd Quartet is from 1975/6, and was premiered two weeks after his death – the quartet uses fragments of his last opera, Death in Venice, in the last movement.

brilliantly incisive and excellently balanced. In particular, the great first movement sounds much more radical than usual, simply because the players pay scrupulous attention to Britten's expression marks and relish the remarkable contrasts of tempo and texture.’ - Gramophone, reviewing the 1st quartet, May 1991

...undeniably compelling readings.’ - Gramophone, on the 2nd and 3rd quartets, December 1990

Britten Quartet:
- Peter Manning & Keith Pascoe, violins
- Peter Lale, viola
- Andrew Shulman, cello

Error on this page? Let us know here

Need more information on this product? Click here