Comp.string Quartets: Takacs.q

This recording received the 1998 Gramophone magazine award for "Best Chamber Recording" and was nominated for the 1999 Grammy Award for "Best Chamber Music Performance."
The string quartet has long been considered the central vehicle for a composer to express his most intimate thoughts; Bartok was no exception. From the late romanticism of the first quartet to the gloom of the final one (written during World War II) the cycle traverses the whole of Bartok's compositional life. Despite the upheaval in music during his lifetime (the composer admitted that Alban Berg's twelve-tone 'Lyric Suite' changed his life) Bartok neither entirely abandoned tonality nor jettisoned his folk-based idioms. From the first quartet to the last, all of the composer's trademark signatures are here--the spiky rhythms, jagged juxtapositions and the relentless motoric drive of the fast movements.
Though a music jury would be hard-pressed to cite a standout track, they might choose the eerie but gorgeous "night music" movement from the Fourth quartet, surely one of the most riveting slow movements in modern quartet literature. In the hands of the Takacs all the quartets receive vibrant and committed performances.
REVIEWS:
Fanfare (5-6/98, pp.78-79) - "...The current ensemble is not as smoothly integrated as the original Takacs, but it has a more colorful sound....For those who like to compare alternate versions...this colorful, sumptuously recorded new Takacs recording...has much to offer..."
BBC Music (5/98, p.56) - Performance: 5 (out of 5), Sound: 5 (out of 5) -
"...The players' rhythmic dynamism and heights of virtuosity, their capacity for rapid shifts of mood and their strongly poetic collective imagination are ideal for Bartok....The performances are all delightful and enlightening..."