Shostakovich - Complete String Quartets Vol. 4 - Mandelring Quartett - Audite: 92530
SACD rip to iso (GB) | 2ch & Mch Hybrid | DR | Classical, Chamber, String

With Vol. V the Mandelring Quartet has accomplished its complete edition of the 15 string quartets of Dmitri Shostakovich. Highly praised in the trade press as one of the outstanding complete editions of our time the last volume presents the Quartets Nos. 11, 13 & 15. The musical language of these late chamber works becomes more jagged, the colours more pale & the tone more elegiac.

The 11th String Quartet of Dmitri Shostakovich received its premiere in the former Leningrad at the preliminary celebrations of the composer's 60th birthday. During the very same night, the composer suffered a serious heart attack which changed his life & way of thinking. While his daily life was determined by stays in hospital & at health resorts, Shostakovich occupied himself very frequently with death in his late works. The three works recorded here, too, are either commemorative works written for colleagues or requiem-compositions in view of the composer’s own end.

      httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdEUeFWAwuc

Quartet No. 11 (1966), dedicated to the late violinist of the Beethoven Quartet, an ensemble with which the composer was intimately acquainted, appears as a multi-movement suite in which character pieces such as the “Etude” & the “Humoresque” turn up – with a grim, cynical humour, of course. The 13th Quartet composed in 1970 is dedicated to the violist of the Beethoven Quartet & is a portrait, in a single monumental movement, of this instrument that Shostakovich loved so much. In the final, 15th Quartet (1974), the composer finally seizes upon a radical formal solution: 6 Adagio movements come together to form a large work of mourning which bears no more dedication…

With Shostakovich’s 15 string quartets the Mandelring Quartet presents a quartet cycle, which in its entirety probably represents the most important corpus of string quartets of the 20th century.

    Tracks:

String Quartet No. 11 In F Minor, Op. 122(16:18)
01.Introduction: Andantino 2:25
02.Scherzo: Allegretto 2:49
03.Recitative: Adagio 1:09
04.Etude: Allegro 1:21
05.Humoresque: Allegro 1:06
06.Elegy: Adagio 3:46
07.Finale: Moderato	 3:42

String Quartet No. 13 In B Flat Minor, Op. 138(18:50)
08.Adagio – Doppio Movimento – Tempo Primo 18:50

String Quartet No. 15 In E Flat Minor, Op. 142(32:38)
09.Elegy: Adagio 10:52
10.Serenade: Adagio 5:39
11.Intermezzo: Adagio 1:27
12.Nocturne: Adagio 4:19
13.Funeral March: Adagio Molto 4:18
14.Epilogue: Adagio	6:03

    Musicians:

Cello: Bernhard Schmidt
Viola: Roland Glassl
Violin: Nanette Schmidt, Sebastian Schmidt


Recorded: 
May 27 - 29, 2009 at Klingenmünster
Equipment: Sennheiser MKH 20, MKH 40, Neumann KM 130, KM 134, Brüel & Kjær 4006, RME micstasy
Stax SRM Monitor, Dynaudio Air, ME Geithain RL 906
Recording format: PCM, 24bit/44,1 kHz
Producer: Dipl.-Tonmeister Ludger Böckenhoff
Editing: Dipl.-Tonmeister Bernhard Hanke