Quatuor Modigliani - Grieg - Smetana (2024) [Official Digital Download 24/192]

Though both men were pioneers of a new musical identity in a Europe inflamed by nationalist movements, Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) and Bedřich Smetana (1824-84) allowed numerous years to elapse before turning to the string quartet. Did they feel a certain apprehension towards a genre too closely bound up with the Austro-German tradition from which they were trying to break away? No doubt other forms had proved more conducive to their folk-tinged musical language – the miniature for Grieg, the opera and the symphonic poem for Smetana. Already praised for his Piano Concerto, the Norwegian composer produced another success, Peer Gynt, before embarking, at the age of thirty-three, on a quartet in G minor, his first if we discount a student effort that has since been lost. His Czech colleague, in his fifties and struck down by total deafness, had just given up his career as a conductor to retire to a village in central Bohemia, where he wrote a musical autobiography in the form of a quartet in E minor, which was his first too. The two men, separated by a sea and differing national identities, did not know one another. But their quartets, written within a year of each other, seem to spring from the same impulse, provoked by a profound crisis and fuelled by an irrepressible desire to confide the most intimate feelings to this noble genre. Through the communion of sixteen strings, the composers retrace the story of their lives, giving the quartet a dimension that had never yet been so personal, with unprecedented emotional power.

Tracklist:
01. Grieg: String Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 27: I. Un poco Andante - Allegro molto ed agitato - Allegro agitato - Più mosso - Presto - Prestissimo
02. Grieg: String Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 27: II. Romanze. Andantino - Allegro agitato - Tempo I - Allegro agitato - Tempo I
03. Grieg: String Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 27: III. Intermezzo. Allegro molto marcato - Più vivo e scherzando - Coda - Vivo
04. Grieg: String Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 27: IV. Finale. Lento - Presto al Saltarello - Presto - Un poco Andante - Presto
05. Smetana: String Quartet No. 1 in E Minor: I. Allegro vivo appassionato
06. Smetana: String Quartet No. 1 in E Minor: II. Allegro moderato à la Polka
07. Smetana: String Quartet No. 1 in E Minor: III. Largo sostenuto
08. Smetana: String Quartet No. 1 in E Minor: IV. Vivace


Thanks to the Original customer!