Doric String Quartet

Doric String Quartet – Beethoven: String Quartets, Vol. 1 (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 29, 2023 · Comments off

The Doric String Quartet is firmly established as one of the leading quartets of its generation, receiving enthusiastic responses from audiences and critics around the globe. Celebrating their 25th anniversary, the Quartet here embarks on a significant new recording project – the complete string quartets by Beethoven. This first volume combines works from Beethoven’s early, middle, and late period. The six quartets Op. 18 were the first he composed, in 1799 and 1800, encouraged by Prince Franz Joseph Maximilian von Lobkowitz, a significant patron of the arts. Once he had completed the set, Beethoven heavily revised the first three quartets, writing to a friend: ‘I have changed it considerably; for I have only now learned to write quartets correctly, as you will see when you receive them.’ Andrey Kirillovich Razumovsky was the Russian ambassador to the Vieneese court, and the dedicatee of the three quartets Op. 59. The last of the middle-period quartets, Op. 95 (Serioso) was dedicated to Beethoven’s close friend and accomplished cellist Nikolaus Zmeskall and is regarded as showing a glimpse of what would come: Beethoven’s late quartets. Extremely complex and largely misunderstood by musicians and audiences in Beethoven’s day, these quartets are now widely considered to be among the greatest musical compositions of all time, and have inspired many later composers. Op. 127, featured in this volume, is the first of these monumental works.

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Nicholas Daniel & Doric String Quartet – British Oboe Quintets (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · July 24, 2023 · Comments off

The legendary British oboist Leon Goossens inspired all the composers represented on this recording, and all but one of the pieces were written for his oboe, on which he premi`ered the works by Delius, Bax, Bliss, and Finzi. The piece by Vaughan Williams is arranged for cor anglais, but it was on his own precious instrument that Goossens would premi`ere Vaughan Williams’s Oboe Concerto, in 1944. Nicholas Daniel has, with special permission from Goossens’s daughter Jennie, recorded Delius’s Two Interludes on Goossens’s (now 110-year-old) oboe, rather than his own modern oboe, and contributes a fascinating booklet note on the influence and experience of playing this instrument.

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Doric String Quartet – String Quartets Nos. 12 & 15 (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 30, 2022 · Comments off

Alongside its highly praised Haydn series, the Doric String Quartet continues its Schubert journey with this second volume of quartets, which precipitates us into the fraught world of late Schubert. Both composers will be central in the Quartet’s recitals next year, to take place in the highest-profile international venues, from New York’s Carnegie Hall to Berlin’s Konzerthaus, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and London’s Wigmore Hall.

Franz Schubert returned to composing string quartets in the 1820s, after four years of focusing on songs which were beginning to gain him wider recognition.

His late chamber compositions reveal probably his most characteristic music, full of deep intimacy and profound ambivalence. The ‘Quartettsatz’ (Quartet Movement) presents a turbulent, norm-breaking first movement. Only a fragment survives of a serene Andante in A flat, and nothing for any scherzo or finale. If the ‘Rosamunde’ and ‘Death and the Maiden’ (CHAN10737) are the most frequently heard of the quartets of Schubert, his last completed one – in G major – certainly remains his most uncompromising in its vastness, and perhaps his most prophetic of the musical future.

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Doric String Quartet – Mozart: String Quartets, Vol. 1 – The Prussian Quartets (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 30, 2022 · Comments off

Towards the end of his life, short of money and heavily in debt, Mozart had the opportunity to visit King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia – a famous patron of the arts and a keen and above-average musician. Mozart performed for the King and left with some cash and a commission for a set of six string quartets, of which these are the only three he completed. They are ground-breaking in the way in which Mozart utilised the voicing of the instruments. King Friedrich was a viola da gamba player turned cellist, and these works feature extensive melodies for the cello, usually in a high register, thus emancipating the cello from the bass line and introducing a more evenly blended texture.

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Doric String Quartet – Mendelssohn: String Quartets, Vol. 2 (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 30, 2022 · Comments off

Following an exceptional critical reception of their first volume of Mendelssohn’s Quartets, the Doric String Quartet now completes the project. As in the case of the previous volume, the players juxtapose one of the early quartets (No. 2) with two of the later compositions (No. 3 and No. 4), composed a decade or so later.

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Doric String Quartet – Mendelssohn – String Quartets Volume 1 (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 30, 2022 · Comments off

Alongside its ongoing and much lauded Haydn and Schubert series, both on-stage and on-record, the Doric String Quartet with this Mendelssohn album is adding a new milestone in its repertoire.

Mendelssohn wrote and published these three quartets at very different stages in his life and they therefore outline the complete trajectory of his creative output.

The early Op. 12, also called No. 1, was composed in London and includes many musical allusions to Beethoven, dead only a few years before its composition. These subtly contrast with Mendelssohn’s genially flowing energy.

While Op. 44 No. 3, which incorporates many deft variations, developments, and combinations, follows an extended honeymoon tour and Mendelssohn’s twenty-ninth birthday, Op. 80 emerged from a bout of helpless depression after the sudden death of Mendelssohn’s older sister and confidante, Fanny. Mendelssohn described this quartet as a Requiem, and the nervous agitation often found in his music here bursts forth with full force. Resignation, agitation, and nostalgia shape the work, the almost shocking finality of which may be said to prefigure Mendelssohn’s own death only six months later.

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Doric String Quartet – Haydn: String Quartets, Op. 33 (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 30, 2022 · Comments off

Composed in the summer and autumn of 1781, Haydn’s Op. 33 Quartets were dedicated to the Grand Duke Paul of Russia and premiered on Christmas Day that year in the apartment of the Duke’s wife, the Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna. Nicknamed ‘the Russian quartets’, Op. 33 were some of Mozart’s favourites among Haydn’s works, and inspired Mozart to write his own set of six quartets, of 1785, dedicated to Haydn. Generally light in nature, the Op. 33 are extremely tuneful works, all set in major keys (apart from No. 1, in B minor), and all written in four movements.

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Doric String Quartet – Erich Wolfgang Korngold: The String Quartets (2010) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 30, 2022 · Comments off

Described by the magazine Gramophone as ‘one of the finest young string quartets’, whose members are ‘musicians with fascinating things to say’, the Doric String Quartet has received rave responses from audiences and critics across the globe. The Quartet’s recent recording of Korngold’s string quartets was a 2010 Critics’ Choice in Gramophone.

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BBC Symphony Orchestra, Doric String Quartet, Edward Gardner – Elgar: Symphony No. 1 & Introduction and Allegro (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 30, 2022 · Comments off

BBC Symphony Orchestra, Doric String Quartet, Edward Gardner – Elgar: Symphony No. 1 & Introduction and Allegro (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:15 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

Edward Gardner’s 2017 audiophile release on Chandos explores two of Sir Edward Elgar’s most admired works, the Introduction and Allegro for string quartet and string orchestra, and the Symphony No. 1 in A flat major. Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra are joined by the Doric String Quartet in the Introduction and Allegro, which was modeled on the Baroque concerto grosso form and intended to be a showpiece for the strings of the newly formed London Symphony Orchestra. While it received comparatively few performances in its early years, it has become a concert staple with the dramatically improved skills of modern orchestral string sections. This performance amply demonstrates the wide expressive and technical range of the BBC Symphony and the brilliance of the Doric String Quartet, which maintains interest throughout with its refined playing and polished sonorities. The Symphony No. 1, which was roughly contemporary with the previous work, was immediately popular with audiences and has become one of the best-loved symphonies in the repertoire. Here, Gardner and the BBC Symphony deliver an expansive and richly detailed performance that shows off the orchestra in a transparent multichannel recording that has extraordinary depth and dynamic range, and astonishing clarity. While many listeners will already have a favorite recording from the past, this hybrid SACD is highly recommended because Gardner brings out every facet of the score with precision, vibrant colors, and deep feeling.

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Doric String Quartet – Britten & Purcell: Chamber Works for Strings (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 30, 2022 · Comments off

Founded in 1998 at Pro Corda, Suffolk, the multi-award-winning Doric String Quartet describes recording Britten’s quartets as a significant milestone: ‘In our recording we have endeavoured to tread a line that brings out the humanity in these works but also recognises the need for distance and fragility. This is very personal and intimate music, yet also world-encompassing and timeless.’ The Quartet continues: ‘Another feature of this recording is that Hélène Clément, our violist, is playing on Benjamin Britten’s own viola. This instrument (on loan from the Britten-Pears Foundation) was made in 1843 in Milan by Francesco Guissani. It was previously owned by the composer Frank Bridge who gave it to Britten, as a departure gift when Britten and Pears set sail for the USA in 1939.’ Hélène Clément writes: ‘To be able to explore the music of Britten with the very sound that the composer had in his ears is the greatest honour and joy I could have imagined.’

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Doric String Quartet – John Adams: Naïve and Sentimental Music – Absolute Jest (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 28, 2022 · Comments off

Doric String Quartet - John Adams: Naïve and Sentimental Music - Absolute Jest (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Doric String Quartet – John Adams: Naïve and Sentimental Music – Absolute Jest (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:22 minutes | 1,22 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos Records

As part of his final year as Music Director and following a two-season celebration of the Orchestra’s 125th anniversary, Peter Oundjian and the RSNO here present their second recording of music by John Adams, with the exceptional participation of the Doric String Quartet. Written for a large orchestra including six percussionists, keyboard sampler, and amplified steel-string guitar, Naive and Sentimental Music is a sweepingly symphonic masterpiece, full of contrasts and clashes. It reflects the dichotomy between ‘naive’ and ‘sentimental’ poetry as analysed by Friedrich Schiller in his 1795 essay Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, as well as the ‘bipolar’ musical life of Esa-Pekka Salonen, the dedicatee of this piece, who conducted the first performance with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1999. Absolute Jest is a large-scale scherzo for amplified string quartet and orchestra, heavily inspired by the music of Beethoven, which Adams has always deeply admired. The quartet of soloists, a late addition to the score, emphasises the echoes of Beethoven’s music (mainly his string quartets) and facilitates a ‘hyperspace rate’ of virtuosity, which the Doric String Quartet here perfectly demonstrates.
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Doric String Quartet, Timothy Ridout – Mendelssohn: The String Quintets (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 28, 2022 · Comments off

Doric String Quartet, Timothy Ridout - Mendelssohn: The String Quintets (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

The Doric String Quartet is firmly established as one of the leading quartets of its generation, receiving enthusiastic responses from audiences and critics around the globe. Following their acclaimed recordings of Mendelssohn’s string quartets, here the quartet is joined by leading violist Timothy Ridout for an album of Mendelssohn’s two string quintets. These were written at the beginning and end of his short but remarkable compositional life. Mendelssohn composed No. 1 in 1826, shortly before the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when he was just seventeen. No. 2 was written in 1845, when he was thirty-six, a year before the première of Elijah and just two years before his death.
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Doric String Quartet, Brett Dean, Allison Bell – Dean: Epitaphs & String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · September 11, 2022 · Comments off

Doric String Quartet, Brett Dean, Allison Bell - Dean: Epitaphs & String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Doric String Quartet, Brett Dean, Allison Bell – Dean: Epitaphs & String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:47 minutes | 1001 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

Australian composer Brett Dean’s long professional life as a violist (he served 14 years in the Berlin Philharmonic) surely explains the highly refined mastery with which he writes for strings, even when employing extended techniques. The first movement of his String Quartet No. 1, Eclipse, begins with slow moving patterns that often use harmonics. Tremolos increasingly enter the landscape and reach a climax before launching into a jagged pizzicato episode. The second movement is vigorous and energetic, with hints of a jig and lots of microtonal interaction before concluding quietly. The almost panoramic stillness of the first movement permeates the third.
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