Belcea Quartet – Beethoven: The Complete String Quartets – Plus Documentary (2020) [4 Blu-ray Discs]
Released Date: 2020
Label: EuroArts
Genre: Classical
Duration: 09:27:17 + 01:02:16 (Documentary)
Performers:
Belcea String Quartet
Corina Belcea, violin
Axel Schacher, violin
Krzystof Chorzelski, viola
Antoine Lederlin, cello
Video quality: Blu-ray 1080i
Format / Container: BDMV
Video Codec: H.264
Audio Codec: PCM, DTS
Available again in a repackaged format for the Beethoven Year 2020. This Belcea Quartet box brings a high-definition audiovisual reference recording of Beethoven´s Complete String Quartets to the market! Since 2006, the only filmed concert performance of Beethoven’s quartets available has been the Alban Berg Quartet’s DVD in 4:3 format. With this edition, released on the occasion of the Belcea Quartet’s 20th anniversary, EuroArts fills a niche for a high definition quality audiovisual production of Beethoven´s String Quartets available on Blu-ray.
The ensemble embarked on the mammoth task of playing the complete Beethoven string quartet cycle within a space of 12 days, recorded at the Wiener Konzerthaus in 2012. Every concert featured one work each from the early, middle and late quartets, including perhaps the most exciting of all works by Beethoven: the Opus 133, the “Große Fuge“ which he wrote as the finale of the quartet Opus 130. “This music, just sounds forever « avant-garde », I think in a way that perhaps no music written after the “Große Fuge“ manages to sound to this day”, explains the quartet’s viola player Krzysztof Chorzelski. In this recording, the Belcea Quartet performs the “Große Fuge” in one piece with Opus 130, which makes this performance even more thrilling.
This extraordinary edition not only includes the Belcea’s complete recordings of String Quartets from Vienna Konzerthaus but also a 47-minute bonus documentary “On the Paths of the Beethoven String Quartets” which brings us closer to the ensemble´s reflections on Beethoven´s quartets as well as on this unique project.
Read more![Belcea Quartet, Nicolas Bône, Antônio Meneses - Berg, Webern & Schönberg: Chamber Music (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/09/01/qrw5224ullwdb_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Belcea Quartet, Nicolas Bône, Antônio Meneses – Berg, Webern & Schönberg: Chamber Music (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:19:32 minutes | 2,70 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
With a complete recording of the Beethoven quartets that caused a stir and enchanted concert halls everywhere, the Belcea Quartet is henceforth considered one of the finest quartets in the world. ‘The principle characteristic of their playing is […] intensity,’ wrote BBC Music Magazine in 2013.
With this new recording, the Quartet tackles another summit of chamber music: the Second Viennese School. With their passion and technical abilities, this breathtaking music, which drastically changed the history of music, rings out in all its force and mystery.
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![Belcea Quartet, Till Fellner - Brahms: String Quartets & Piano Quintet (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/29/t61ymaivxavmb_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Belcea Quartet, Till Fellner – Brahms: String Quartets & Piano Quintet (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 02:29:40 minutes | 5,39 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
More than twelve years after its initial incursion into the music of Brahms, the Belcea Quartet now presents an eagerly awaited complete recording of his string quartets. A powerful style and a sense of musical architecture are the two qualities most often attributed to the Belcea, which is now one of the top international quartets. And those characteristics blossom to the full in Brahms. For the Piano Quintet, its members are joined by Till Fellner. This Austrian former student of Alfred Brendel is one of today’s most respected pianists, combining grace, rigour and musical intelligence. In September 2016 the Belcea Quartet will embark on a tour that will take it to the United States and most countries in Europe.
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![Belcea Quartet, Piotr Anderszewsk - Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 3 & Piano Quintet (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/29/macltx7yl2jaa_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Belcea Quartet, Piotr Anderszewsk – Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 3 & Piano Quintet (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:09:13 minutes | 622 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Formed in 1994 at the Royal College of Music in London, the Belcea Quartet has recorded the complete string quartets of Beethoven, Brahms, Bartók and Britten. For this new Alpha release it has chosen two works by one of the leading composers of twentieth-century chamber music, Dmitri Shostakovich. The Quartet no.3, of historic importance, was initially censured by the Soviet regime, then revised by Shostakovich for its first performance in 1946; the refined playing of the Belcea Quartet brings out all its contours. The Piano Quintet is among its composer’s most famous works and significantly contributed to his success on the international scene and with the Soviet authorities. The Belcea Quartet performs it in the company of the Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski: the result is a musical encounter at the highest level of excellence.
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![Belcea Quartet - Janáček & Ligeti: Quartets (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/29/d1162ygt5qyvb_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Belcea Quartet – Janáček & Ligeti: Quartets (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:10:33 minutes | 2,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
For this new recording, The Belcea Quartet has chosen 3 quartets by two iconic composers of the 20th century : Leos Janáček and György Ligeti. The first quartet was inspired by Leon Tolstoy’s famous novella, The Kreutzer Sonata. The secon quartet is subtitled Intimate Letters, in homage to Kamila Stösslova. And th first quartet by igeti, subtitled Métamorphoses nocturnes because of its particular form is described as a sort of theme and variations but not with a specific them.
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![Belcea Quartet - Beethoven: The Complete String Quartets, Vol. 1 (2012) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/29/jgi6rsunbyzga_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Belcea Quartet – Beethoven: The Complete String Quartets, Vol. 1 (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:53:19 minutes | 4,09 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Zig-Zag Territoires
With the participation of Corina Belcea, Krzysztof Chorzelski, Antoine Lederlin and Axel schacher, The Belcea Quartet impress with their renditions of Beethoven quartets…
Rather than presenting their Beethoven set in a neat chronological series, the Belcea Quartet mix quartets of different periods on each CD, as the Alban Berg Quartet did some years ago. Also like the ABQ, these performances are described as being recorded ‘in concert’, but applause has been edited out and indeed there’s nothing to suggest live performance.
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Belcea Quartet – Beethoven: The Complete String Quartets (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 08:41:05 minutes | 9,11 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Alpha is reissuing the complete Beethoven quartets by the Belcea Quartet : ‘Beethoven’s music has been at the center of our life as a quartet from our very first rehearsal together back in 1994. However, it is more recently that we immersed ourselves totally in Beethoven in preparation for, and during the course of the immense project of performing and recording all of his string quartets in the season 2011/12. It is during this past year that Beethoven’s music became an all-consuming passion for each of us. These sixteen quartets written some two hundred years ago form one the most complete and powerful musical statements ever made. The completeness lies in their unprecedented intensity and in the astonishing development that can be traced between the early and the late works – a thirty-year long revolution which altered forever the way we experience music.’
Read more![Belcea Quartet, Tabea Zimmermann, Jean-Guihen Queyras - Brahms: String Sextets (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/04/02/fqi7sxtoukrta_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Belcea Quartet, Tabea Zimmermann, Jean-Guihen Queyras – Brahms: String Sextets (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:52 minutes | 1,31 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Brahms was one of the first composers to write for pairs of violins, violas and cellos, blazing the trail for Dvořák, Tchaikovsky, Korngold and Schoenberg. His two sextets are early works, composed in 1860 and 1865 respectively. Brahms wrote to his publisher that the Second was in “the same joyful vein” as the First. Yet the composer’s life was sombre at this time: his mother died suddenly and his romantic relationship with the soprano Agathe von Siebold ended in failure; indeed, the first movement of the Sextet opens with a viola motif on the notes A-G-A-D-B-E (AGADHE in German notation). The members of the Belcea Quartet called in their friends Tabea Zimmermann and Jean-Guihen Queyras to record these peaks of the chamber repertory following a concert tour to some of Europe’s major venues.
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