Naxos’ English music series is turning into one of the gems of the CD catalogue. Time and again, it has revealed unexpected treasure in the chamber music of mid-20th century composers who were ...

In the thirty-page booklet that accompanies Wadada Leo Smith's String Quartets Nos. 1-12, the trumpeter & composer devotes a few paragraphs to the subject of inspiration. He traces an irregular line ...

Inspired by TS Eliot, the young Tippett dreamt of writing four quartets. In fact, he went on to compose five. Three are relatively early, dating from the second world war, two are from his later years ...

The Escher Quartet's performance of one of Zemlinsky's greatest and most radical pieces is a highlight of this superb disc The first instalment of the Escher Quartet's survey of Zemlinsky, including ...

New York's formidable Flux Quartet has made something of a specialty of Morton Feldman's terrifying six-hour String Quartet No. 2 (including a fine recording), so the group's new recording of the ...

The venerable Borodin Quartet has something of an edge when it comes to performing the works of Shostakovich: the composer supervised its original players in the study and performance of each of his ...

Benjamin Britten wrote the first two of his numbered string quartets in 1941 and 1945. The First was in the US, where it was commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge; the Second was written for the ...

Royal String Quartet Hyperion CDA 67812 (2 CDs for the price of one)* * * Polish composer Henryk Górecki (1933-2010) is not just a one-hit wonder, but, for most people, a one-work composer, known for ...

Feldman’s String Quartet No 1 marked an important point of transition. The motivic tics of his late chamber music – key works such as Patterns in a Chromatic Field, For John Cage and Piano and String ...

String Quartet No. 2 Eva Resch, Soprano Arnold Schoenberg, Composer Asasello Quartet String Quartet No. 3 Arnold Schoenberg, Composer Asasello Quartet String Quartet No. 4 Arnold Schoenberg, Composer ...