GREAT RECORDINGS phase 14

BEETHOVEN: THE LATE STRING QUARTETS
Opp. 127, 130, 131, 132, 133 & 135
Alban Berg Quartett

4 76820 2
(Angel: 4 76824 2) (3CDs)
Recorded live 1989
Stereo/DDD
193 minutes

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‘These performances are taken from an outstanding modern Beethoven quartet cycle, given by the Alban Berg Quartet in Vienna in 1989. To their trademark polish, finesse and intellectual penetration, the ABQ adds, where appropriate, a wildness and dangerous energy that is both exciting and characteristically Beethovenian.’ (Gramophone)

Awards: Diapason d’Or, France; CD Compact, Spain

Coming together in 1970, having emerged from the ranks of Viennese orchestras, the original members of the ABQ made their debut the following year and in 1972, with the permission of the composer’s widow, took the name of Alban Berg. During the first ten years of the group’s professional life, the personnel changed twice, with Gerhard Schulz joining in 1978 and Thomas Kakuska in 1981, but for the past 25 years these two, along with founder members Günter Pichler and Valentin Erben, have established a collective reputation as one of the finest quartets of our times.

Though the ABQ is always keen to play (and to record) a wide repertoire (with the Second Viennese School and contemporary works sitting alongside the masterworks of the Romantic and Classical periods), the group has always recognised the importance to its own artistic life of the Austro-German tradition, exemplified by the quartets of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and, of course, Beethoven.

The ABQ has recorded exclusively for EMI for 30 years, so it is not surprising that the group has twice tackled Beethoven’s complete works for string quartet. Their first (highly successful) recording was made in the studio in the late 1970s, but for their second they decided to risk recording all sixteen quartets at a series of live concerts given in the Konzerthaus in Vienna in June 1989. They felt that any tiny imprecisions would be more than offset by the added spontaneity of the live occasion and the results, as heard here in the six works known collectively as the Late Quartets, certainly bear out their optimism.