Britten - String Quartets 1-3, 3 Divertimenti; Purcell - Fantasias | Chandos CHAN201242

Britten - String Quartets 1-3, 3 Divertimenti; Purcell - Fantasias

£14.49

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Label: Chandos

Cat No: CHAN201242

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 2

Genre: Chamber

Release Date: 29th March 2019

Contents

About

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.’

Reviews

The performances are all superbly judged and controlled, balancing fragility with strength, restraint with great depth of feeling. The opening of the First [Quartet], with its high, ethereal phrases offset by worldly, guitar-like cello twangs, is rich with ambiguities... The Third, haunted by thoughts of imminent mortality, bids farewell to life and love with quiet dignity and gazes towards infinity as time ticks away towards the close: it’s wonderfully done, and you can’t help but be moved by it. ... this is a major cycle, engaging and profound in equal measure, and you need to hear it.  Tim Ashley
Gramophone May 2019
Gramophone Editor's Choice

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