Posts Tagged ‘beethoven’

BLOGCRITICS: Music Review – Cypress SQ – Beethoven – The Early String Quartets

Source: blogcritics.org
June 6, 2016
by Jon Sobel

The Cypress String Quartet‘s new two-CD set of Beethoven’s Op. 18, known as his Early String Quartets, completes the group’s 20-year project of studying and recording all the composer’s string quartets, a form he took from Haydn and sculpted into a body of work the likes of which the music world had never seen – nor has it seen since.

Beethoven said he based the slow movement of Quartet No. 1 on the death scene in Romeo and Juliet. On the Cypress’s recording, the driving figures that burst from the middle section of the slow movement lurch out of the speakers like stumbling ogres. It’s jarring at first. Then it asserts a devil-may-care passion that feels just right. The first violin even supplies a Heifetz-esque romantic flourish at the end.

By finding the shadows in No. 1’s jaunty finale, the musicians put a final accent on the assertion that the Op. 18 quartets already display, as Jan Swafford’s liner notes say, “the kind of singular expressiveness, the unity and dramatic unfolding that would mark all of Beethoven’s mature works.” read more »

Beethoven: The Late String Quartets AV2356

Disc 1
String Quartet in E-Flat Major, Opus 127
String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132

Disc 2
String Quartet in B-Flat Major, Opus 130
Große Fuge, Opus 133
and Alternate Finale

Disc 3
String Quartet in C-Sharp Minor, Opus 131
String Quartet in F Major, Opus 135

When people discuss the greatest contributions to the arts in Western civilization, names such as Shakespeare, da Vinci, and Beethoven inevitably arise. Proponents for Beethoven cite his five late quartets, which were the final works that he completed. In this three-disc set, reissued here on Avie Records, May 6 2016, the Cypress String Quartet brings a fresh voice of humanity and clarity to these monumental works.

The final disc completed for this set includes Beethoven's String Quartet in E-flat Major, Opus. 127 and his String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132. These performances were recorded at Skywalker Sound by engineer Mark Willsher and produced by Cypress first violinist, Cecily Ward.

Read Fanfare Magazine's review of this box set

Included in the box set are program notes written by Joseph Kerman, the author of The Beethoven Quartets (W. W. Norton & Company).

In addition to the physical CD, high-resolution, audiophile-quality versions of this album are available for purchase in both 44khz/16-bit and 96khz/24-bit uncompressed .WAV audio formats via artistconnex, powered by Downloads NOW!

Purchase this album direct from the artists at cypressquartet.bandcamp.com

SAMPLES / TRACK LISTING

    Disc 1 [Opus 127 and Opus 132]


  • Beethoven 127-1 1. String Quartet in E-Flat Major, Opus 127: Maestoso - Allegro 6:05
  • Beethoven 127-2 2. String Quartet in E-Flat Major, Opus 127: Adagio, ma non troppo e molto cantabile 14:44
  • Beethoven 127-3 3. String Quartet in E-Flat Major, Opus 127: Scherzando vivace 8:54
  • Beethoven 127-4 4. String Quartet in E-Flat Major, Opus 127: Allegro 6:47
  • Beethoven 132-1 5. String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132: Assai sostenuto - Allegro 9:49
  • Beethoven 132-2 6. String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132: Allegro ma non tanto 8:32
  • Beethoven 132-3 7. String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132: Molto Adagio - Andante 16:12
  • Beethoven 132-4 8. String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132: Alla marcia, assai vivace 2:14
  • Beethoven 132-5 9. String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132: Allegro appassionato - Presto 6:31

    • Disc 2 [Opus 130 and Opus 133]


  • Beethoven 130-1 1. String Quartet in B-Flat Major, Opus 130: Adagio ma non troppo - Allegro 14:18
  • Beethoven 130-2 2. String Quartet in B-Flat Major, Opus 130: Presto 2:07
  • Beethoven 130-3 3. String Quartet in B-Flat Major, Opus 130: Poco scherzoso: Andante con moto ma non troppo 7:25
  • Beethoven 130-4 4. String Quartet in B-Flat Major, Opus 130: Alla Danza tedesca: Allegro assai 3:57
  • Beethoven 130-5 5. String Quartet in B-Flat Major, Opus 130: Cavatina: Adagio molto espressivo 6:34
  • Beethoven 133 6. String Quartet in B-Flat Major, Opus 130: Original finale (1825): Grosse Fuge: Overtura - Fuga (Opus 133)15:15
  • Beethoven 130-6 7. String Quartet in B-Flat Major, Opus 130: Alternate finale (1826): Finale: Allegro 10:48

    • Disc 3 [Opus 131 and Opus 135]

  • Beethoven 131-1 1. String Quartet in C-Sharp Minor, Opus 131: Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo 5:44
  • Beethoven 131-2 2. String Quartet in C-Sharp Minor, Opus 131: Allegro molto vivace 3:06
  • Beethoven 131-3 3. String Quartet in C-Sharp Minor, Opus 131: Allegro moderato 0:43
  • Beethoven 131-4 4. String Quartet in C-Sharp Minor, Opus 131: Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile-Piu mosso-Andante moderato e lusinghiero-Adagio-Allegretto-Adagio ma non troppo e semplice-Allegretto 14:27
  • Beethoven 131-5 5. String Quartet in C-Sharp Minor, Opus 131: Presto 5:19
  • Beethoven 131-6 6. String Quartet in C-Sharp Minor, Opus 131: Adagio quasi un poco andante 2:13
  • Beethoven 131-7 7. String Quartet in C-Sharp Minor, Opus 131: Allegro 6:58
  • Beethoven 135-1 8. String Quartet in F Major, Opus 135: Allegretto 6:41
  • Beethoven 135-2 9. String Quartet in F Major, Opus 135: Vivace 3:20
  • Beethoven 135-3 10. String Quartet in F Major, Opus 135: Lento assai, cantante e tranquillo 7:17
  • Beethoven 135-4 11. String Quartet in F Major, Opus 135: Grave ma non troppo tratto - Allegro 6:56

Fanfare Magazine Review
Sep.4, 2012
First, bravo! Another modern-day ensemble acknowledges the importance of placing the B♭-Major Quartet’s Grosse Fuge ahead of the alternate finale. The resisters, like the recently reviewed Shanghai Quartet, are in an ever-growing minority, one that, in my opinion, deserves to be discredited.

Second, bravissimo! The Cypress String Quartet’s traversal of Beethoven’s late quartets is the best, bar none, I’ve yet to encounter. These are performances of a technical perfection and keenness of interpretive insight that one is apt to hear only in the mind’s inner ear. Tiny details seen in the score but almost never heard are revealed with crystalline clarity. For example, in the opening Adagio measures of the B♭-Major Quartet, how often does one actually hear the C-G double-stop in the viola part on the upbeat to the sixth full bar? Yet here it is, as clear as can be, to no small degree the result of the Cypress Quartet players’ scrupulous observance of every one of Beethoven’s crescendo swells to a p and a recording of unusual penetrability.

But there’s something that goes way beyond following the composer’s dynamic and phrasing instructions or taking the lengthy exposition repeat, and it has to do with a musical intuition and vision of the work that, frankly, strikes me like a bolt of lightning. Every one of the quartet’s six movements, including the Grosse Fuge (seven if you count the alternate finale), and not just the Alla Danza , is played as if it were a dance. As many times as I’ve heard this quartet, it never before occurred to me that it’s as much an “apotheosis of the dance” as is the composer’s Seventh Symphony. Each of the quartet’s movements is informed by a stylized dance form of one type or another. The first movement opens with a stately entrée grave in 3 and then proceeds to alternate with a lively, vigorous, bounding type of dance in 4, perhaps a galliard. The second movement (Presto) in cut time might easily have its roots in the tarantella. The third movement (Poco scherzoso) bears certain characteristics of a gavotte. The fourth movement (Alla Danza) is a sad little Viennese waltz. The fifth movement (Cavatina) is, of course, the quartet’s sarabande, and the alternate finale could well be a rigaudon or tambourin. That leaves the Grosse Fuge , which in this context now becomes all important and lays claim to its hierarchical position as the quartet’s rightful conclusion, for it embodies all of the dance impulses that precede it. When you listen to the Cypress Quartet play this work, you will hear Beethoven’s B♭-Major Quartet as the dance suite it probably is, and you will quite literally hear the music dancing.

This is a very special performance, but it’s not the only one. The A-Minor Quartet’s great “Heiliger Dankegesang” is of a transfixing concentration and intensity that will melt your heart and bore a hole through your soul. And again, the combination of the ensemble’s clarity of voicing and the transparency of the recording expose every tiny scrap of filigree in the contrasting andante sections of the movement. This is music-making that will hold you absolutely spellbound in its thrall.

If reverence and awe, then joyful embrace, are Beethoven’s vision of a personal God in the “Heiliger Dankegesang,” what vision does he impart in the cold, impersonal, remote, and alien cosmogony of the C♯-Minor Quartet’s opening fugue? Is it that of Schubert peering into the dark, fathomless abyss? No, it’s the vision, rather comforting in its own way, of a universe neither benevolent nor malevolent, but unmindful of us and unfolding as it should. The key to capturing the essence of this music is not to play it devoid of expression but to play it with an expression that expresses expressionlessness. This the Cypress Quartet achieves with a feeling of aloofness and detachment conceived most immaculately.

Exothermic vs. endothermic—all-embracing warmth vs. calculated cold in the two preceding quartets. Where does Beethoven go from here? To foppery and tomfoolery in the final F-Major Quartet, a work filled mostly with good-natured humor and a generosity of spirit. But there remains the quartet’s Lento assai, a movement that, with its concluding autistic suspensions repeated over and over again, foretells the Mahlerian leave-taking—“ewig … ewig … ewig”—at the end of Das Lied von der Erde.

Read the complete review here

From my very first encounter with the San Francisco-based Cypress String Quartet in 33:2, I knew this was not just another string-quartet ensemble, that this was a group of special talent that was marked for greatness. I noted then the awesome technical resources and communicative expressiveness of these players and singled them out as my then current favorites in this repertoire. Nothing has changed since I made those statements. If anything, the completion of this set of Beethoven’s late quartets with the Nos. 12 and 15 has only reinforced my feelings. I would now pick the Cypress String Quartet over the Cleveland, Emerson, Artemis, Endellion, and Takács quartets and the Tokyo Quartet’s recent remake. It will now be a shame, and a major disappointment, if the Cypress String Quartet does not complete its Beethoven cycle with the early and middle quartets. This is potential Want List material and urgently recommended.

Jerry Dubins

Back to Discography

Beethoven: The Early String Quartets AV2348

String Quartet Op.18 No.1
String Quartet Op.18 No.2
String Quartet Op.18 No.6

Disc 2
String Quartet Op.18 No.3
String Quartet Op.18 No.4
String Quartet Op.18 No.5

Included in this new 2-CD set - released internationally on May 6, 2016 on Avie Records - are original, extensive and insightful program notes written by Jan Swafford, author of "Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph." Jan Swafford's biographies of composers Charles Ives and Johannes Brahms have established him as a revered music historian, capable of bringing his subjects vibrantly to life. His magnificent new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven peels away layers of legend to get to the living, breathing human being who composed some of the world's most iconic music. Swafford mines sources never before used in English-language biographies to reanimate the revolutionary ferment of Enlightenment-era Bonn, where Beethoven grew up and imbibed the ideas that would shape all of his future work. Swafford then tracks his subject to Vienna, capital of European music, where Beethoven built his career in the face of critical incomprehension, crippling ill health, romantic rejection, and 'fate's hammer', his ever-encroaching deafness. At the time of his death he was so widely celebrated that over ten thousand people attended his funeral.This book is a biography of Beethoven the man and musician, not the myth, and throughout, Swafford - himself a composer - offers insightful readings of Beethoven's key works. More than a decade in the making, this will be the standard Beethoven biography for years to come.

More Information on CSQ-AVIE releases: Avie Records website
30 second samples coming soon
SAMPLES / TRACK LISTING
2:38:29 total running time

Beethoven: The Middle String Quartets AV2318

Disc 1
String Quartet Op.59, No.1

Disc 2
String Quartet Op.59 No.2
String Quartet Op.59 No.3

Disc 3
String Quartet Op.74 'Harp'
String Quartet Op.95 'Serioso'

Following three acclaimed releases for AVIE surveying works by Dvořák, Schubert and contemporary Americans, the San Francisco-based Cypress String Quartet turns to the seminal string quartets of Beethoven, performing the five quartets from the composer’s middle period. Formed in 1996, the Cypresses added Beethoven to their repertoire early on. Their signature sound, which is clear and transparent, built up from the bottom register and layered like a pyramid, lends itself beautifully to the Middle String Quartets – the three “Rasumovskys,” the “Harp,” and the “Serioso.”

Included in this new box set - released internationally on November 11, 2014 on Avie Records - are original, extensive and insightful program notes written by Nicholas Mathews, professor at UC Berkeley.
Download Liner Notes Here (.pdf) / (.doc)

Check the Avie Records website for more information about this album and other recent Cypress Quartet releases.

SAMPLES / TRACK LISTING

    Disc 1 [Op. 59 No.1] 40:31 total

     
  • Beethoven 59-1-1 1. String Quartet Op.59 No.1, I: Allegro 10:18
  • Beethoven 59-1-2 2. String Quartet Op.59 No.1, II: Allegro vivace e sempre scherzando 9:24
  • Beethoven 59-1-3 3. String Quartet Op.59 No.1, III: Adagio molto e mesto - 12:36
  • Beethoven 59-1-4 4. String Quartet Op.59 No.1, IV: Allegro (Theme Russe) 8:12

    • Disc 2 [Op.59 Nos. 2 and 3] 66:31 total

     
  • Beethoven 59-2-1 1. String Quartet Op.59 No.2, I: Allegro 9:14
  • Beethoven 59-2-2 2. String Quartet Op.59 No.2, II: Molto adagio 12:30
  • Beethoven 59-2-3 3. String Quartet Op.59 No.2, III: Allegretto 7:08
  • Beethoven 59-2-4 4. String Quartet Op.59 No.2, IV: Finale: Presto 5:38
  • Beethoven 59-3-1 5. String Quartet Op.59 No.3, I: Introduzione: Andante con moto - Allegro vivace 11:03
  • Beethoven 59-3-2 6. String Quartet Op.59 No.3, II: Andante con moto, quasi allegretto 9:36
  • Beethoven 59-3-3 7. String Quartet Op.59 No.3, III: Menuetto: Grazioso - Trio 5:03
  • Beethoven 59-3-4 8. String Quartet Op.59 No.3, IV: Allegro molto 6:04

    • Disc 3 [Op.74 and Op.95]

    51:46 total
  • Beethoven 74-1 1. String Quartet Op.74, I: Poco adagio - Allegro 9:36
  • Beethoven 74-2 2. String Quartet Op.74, II: Adagio ma non troppo 9:01
  • Beethoven 74-3 3. String Quartet Op.74, III: Presto 5:10
  • Beethoven 74-4 4. String Quartet Op.74, IV: Allegretto con variazioni 6:50
  • Beethoven 95-1 5. String Quartet Op.95, I: Allegro con brio 4:30
  • Beethoven 95-2 6. String Quartet Op.95, II: Allegretto ma non troppo 7:13
  • Beethoven 95-3 7. String Quartet Op.95, III: Allegro assai vivace, ma serioso 4:30
  • Beethoven 95-4 8. String Quartet Op.95, IV: Larghetto espressivo - Allegretto agitato - Allegro 4:47
2:38:47 total running time

Protected: Beethoven: The Middle String Quartets * FULL PREVIEW

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Beethoven Late Quartets, Volume 3

String Quartet in E-Flat Major, Opus 127
String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132

The Cypress String Quartet has finished recording the final late quartets written by Beethoven between 1822 and 1826 (historically known as Beethoven's Late Period) for commercial release. The final disc of this three-volume set includes Beethoven's String Quartet in E-flat Major, Opus. 127 and his String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132. The complete set, as well as a separate Volume 3, will be available in March 2012. The entire Beethoven cycle was produced by Cypress first violinist Cecily Ward, engineered by Mark Willsher, and recorded at Skywalker Sound.

Purchase this album direct from the artists at cypressquartet.bandcamp.com

SAMPLES / TRACK LISTING
  • Beethoven 127-1 1. String Quartet in E-Flat Major, Opus 127: Maestoso - Allegro 6:05
  • Beethoven 127-2 2. String Quartet in E-Flat Major, Opus 127: Adagio, ma non troppo e molto cantabile 14:44
  • Beethoven 127-3 3. String Quartet in E-Flat Major, Opus 127: Scherzando vivace 8:54
  • Beethoven 127-4 4. String Quartet in E-Flat Major, Opus 127: Allegro 6:47
  • Beethoven 132-1 5. String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132: Assai sostenuto - Allegro 9:49
  • Beethoven 132-2 6. String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132: Allegro ma non tanto 8:32
  • Beethoven 132-3 7. String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132: Molto Adagio - Andante 16:12
  • Beethoven 132-4 8. String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132: Alla marcia, assai vivace 2:14
  • Beethoven 132-5 9. String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132: Allegro appassionato - Presto 6:31

Protected: Beethoven: The Late String Quartets (Complete)

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How She Danced: String Quartets of Elena Ruehr

String Quartet #4 (2005) Commissioned by the Cypress String Quartet
String Quartet #3 (2001) Commissioned by the Rockport C.M.S.
String Quartet #1 (1991) Winner, ASCAP Award

The Cypress String Quartet released How She Danced: String Quartets of Elena Ruehr on Tuesday, February 23, 2010. The album includes acclaimed Boston-based composer Elena Ruehr's String Quartets No. 1 (1991), No. 3 (2001), and No. 4 (commissioned by the Cypress Quartet in 2005), and will be available on iTunes, CDBaby.com, Amazon.com, and other major retailers. The disc was produced by Cypress first violinist Cecily Ward and Mark Willsher, and recorded at Skywalker Sound.

Included program notes feature an interview with the artists by Bill McGlaughlin, host of Saint Paul Sunday and Exploring Music.

Purchase this album direct from the artists at cypressquartet.bandcamp.com


SAMPLES / TRACK LISTING
  • Ruehr 4-1 1. String Quartet #4 - Sonata: Introduzione; Andante con moto 7:26
  • Ruehr 4-2 2. String Quartet #4 - Aria: Andante 7:03
  • Ruehr 4-3 3. String Quartet #4 - Minuet: Grazioso 7:56
  • Ruehr 4-4 4. String Quartet #4 - Finale: Allegro molto 8:03
  • Ruehr 3-1 5. String Quartet #3 - Clay Flute 3:54
  • Ruehr 3-2 6. String Quartet #3 - The Abbey 8:55
  • Ruehr 3-3 7. String Quartet #3 - How She Danced 4:11
  • Ruehr 3-4 8. String Quartet #3 - Bell Call 6:30
  • Ruehr 1-1 9. String Quartet #1 - Patterns 7:39
  • Ruehr 1-2 10. String Quartet #1 - Interlude 3:35
  • Ruehr 1-3 11. String Quartet #1 - Let's Sit Beneath the Stars 5:26
  • Ruehr 1-4 12. String Quartet #1 - Estampie 4:09

REVIEWS

For How She Danced: String Quartets of Elena Ruehr
"It's a brave move by the San Francisco-based Cypress Quartet to devote its new disc entirely to a contemporary composer, and a little-known name at that. But the music of Elena Ruehr, raised in Michigan and now teaching at MIT, is so appealing, and the performances by the Cypress players so persuasive, that the project brings rich rewards.Ruehr's music hovers between a resonant neo-Romanticism and more cerebral contrapuntal techniques, and it's full of rhythm, life and colour, immediately accessible to the listener but rich enough to repay repeated listenings. It's hard to imagine it being given more committed performances than these by the Cypress players."
Strad Magazine Review (April 2010 by David Kettle)
"Here is the fine young Cypress Quartet's cellist Jennifer Kloetzel explaining to Saint Paul Sunday’s Bill McGlaughlin how the San Francisco Quartet's close relationship to 46-year-old MIT composer Elena Ruehr came about: "A few years ago we decided to champion the composers whose music we like—by playing their music a lot and playing a lot of their music. We commission and recommission them and really get into their world, that's become something that's very important to us— Elena's become a real part of our musical lives." Her music is "infectious," says the ensemble's violist, Ethan Filner. You can say that again many times over after hearing the Cypress Quartet's recordings of Ruehr's Quartets Nos. 1, 3 and 4. The result of the quartet's immersion in Ruehr's musical world is one of the most appealing contemporary quartet discs in a very long time. The disc's title, "How She Danced," (Ruehr is a trained dancer as well as musician and composer) comes from the allegro third movement of Ruehr's Third Quartet and, as with so much of this, it sounds like the strongly tonal meeting point of Philip Glass' minimal-ism and the pan-ethnic folk-influenced music of the great early 20th century experimentalist Henry Cowell. In other words, it's where country reels and hoedowns and Hindu ritual and Balinese gamelan all somehow come together with the restless unison ostinatos of what was once "downtown" new music. A beautiful disc. ★★★ 1/2"
Buffalo News - Listening Post (March 2010 review by Jeff Simon)
"I was enchanted with this, my first acquaintance with the music of American composer Elena Ruehr, and I think you will be, too. A strong, engaging personality suffuses her music. She was born and spent her early years in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, an area of much natural beauty that is said to have the most beautiful fall colors in America. Her music reflects a variety of traditional and world influences in addition to her formal education under mentors William Bolcom, Milton Babbitt and Vincent Persichetti. The daughter of a mathematician, she admits to a fondness for solving intellectual puzzles such as 12-tone rows, but she decided at an early stage in her career to leave the complicated stuff beneath the surface of what people hear, incorporating it into the musical form (For the record, Mozart did much the same thing).As a result, her music, of which we get a good sampling here from String Quartets 1, 3 and 4, written between 1991 and 2005, is both accessible and challenging. We sometimes forget, in analyzing the art of the string quartet, how sensually beautiful the sound of these four strings can be. Ruehr reminds us. Her art consists in large part of long melodies, long intonations and exhalations, gorgeously swelling tones and smartly struck pizzicati. The members of the Cypress Quartet – Cecily Ward and Tom Stone, violins; Ethan Filner, viola; and Jennifer Kloetzel, cello – attest to the challenges they encountered in performing these works in an interview with radio host Bill McGlaughlin, excerpted in the program notes. They speak from experience of the 17-bar melody with a canon in 3 parts, with all four players playing fragments of it here and there, in the slow movement of Quartet No. 3. In this movement, entitled "The Abbey" and taking its inspiration from the style of 12th Century Abbess Hildegard von Bingen, the chant-like melody is supported by a catchy rhythm derived from it. The trick, which the Cypresses bring out with deceptive ease, is to make the music sound as simple and natural as possible."
Sequenza21.com Review (Feb 2010 by Phil Muse)

Beethoven: Late String Quartets, Vol. 2

String Quartet in Bb Major, Opus 130
Große Fuge, Opus 133

The Cypress String Quartet is recording the six quartets written by Beethoven between 1822 and 1826 (historically known as Beethoven's Late Period) for commercial release. The second disc of this three-volume set includes Beethoven's String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130 and the Große Fuge, Op. 133. It will be available on iTunes, CDbaby.com, Amazon.com, and other major retailers on August 3, 2010. The disc was produced by Cypress first violinist Cecily Ward, engineered by Mark Willsher, and recorded at Skywalker Sound. Volume 1 of the Cypress's Late Beethoven set was released in August 2009. Gramophone praised the disc as "revealing artistry of uncommon insight and cohesion." The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported, "The Cypress players converse with such rare sincerity as to make long-familiar music sound utterly fresh." The album was featured as one of The Denver Post's "Best discs of 2009."

Purchase this album direct from the artists at cypressquartet.bandcamp.com



SAMPLES / TRACK LISTING

REVIEWS

For Beethoven Late Quartets, Volume 2
"In the forest of Beethoven recordings, the Cypress String Quartet's are some of the mightiest trees. Compounding the success of its first installment of late-Beethoven quartets, the San Francisco-based ensemble here considers the great B-Flat Major, Op. 130, offering special insight by including both the original "Grosse Fuge" and the later, alternate finale. The performances are masterly: technically assured and lucidly conversational. After this, one can hardly wait for the third and final release."
Grade: A -- Zachary Lewis for the Cleveland Plain Dealer (7/11/2010)
"The Cypress' joie de vivre in this music shines through in this movement, courtesy of close miking by engineer Mark Willsher. The Cypress project a feverish but delightful intensity into the mix...A fine album of chamber music, certainly a must for collectors of modern Beethoven surveys."
- Gary Lemco for Audiophile Audition
Quartet Opus 130, Grosse Fuge Opus 133 & Alternate Finale Beethoven referred to his Opus 130 Quartet in his conversation books as the "Liebquartett" (Dear Quartet), a fitting title for a quartet that contains some of Beethoven's sweetest and most intimate music. Completed in 1825, the quartet is written in six movements, confounding expectations of music form...

Beethoven: Late String Quartets, Vol. 1

String Quartet in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131 String Quartet in F Major, Op. 135

When people discuss the greatest contributions to the arts in Western civilization, names such as Shakespeare, da Vinci, and Beethoven inevitably arise. Proponents for Beethoven cite his five late quartets, which were the final works that he completed. In this second of three volumes, the Cypress String Quartet continues to bring a fresh voice of humanity and clarity to these monumental works.

Purchase this album direct from the artists at cypressquartet.bandcamp.com



SAMPLES / TRACK LISTING
  • Beethoven 131-1 1. Beethoven Quartet in C-Sharp Minor, Op.131 - I. Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo 5:44
  • Beethoven 131-2 2. Op.131 - II. Allegro molto vivace 3:06
  • Beethoven 131-3 3. Op.131 - III. Allegro moderato 0:43
  • Beethoven 131-4 4. Op.131 - IV. Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile-Piu mosso-Andante moderato e lusinghiero-Adagio-Allegretto-Adagio ma non troppo e semplice-Allegretto 14:27
  • Beethoven 131-5 5. Op.131 - V. Presto 5:19
  • Beethoven 131-6 6. Op.131 - VI. Adagio quasi un poco andante 2:13
  • Beethoven 131-7 7. Op.131 - VII. Allegro 6:58
  • Beethoven 135-1 8. Beethoven Quartet in F Major, Op.135 - I.Allegretto 6:41
  • Beethoven 135-2 9. Op.135 - II. Vivace 3:20
  • Beethoven 135-3 10. Op.135 - III. Lento assai, cantante e tranquillo 7:17
  • Beethoven 135-4 11. Op.135 - IV. Grave ma non troppo tratto - Allegro 6:56

REVIEWS

For Beethoven Late Quartets, Vol 1
"Another recording of Beethoven String Quartets seems almost unnecessary, but this one by the San Francisco-based Cypress String Quartet doesn't belong on the slush pile. Presenting two late works, the Cypress players converse with such rare sincerity as to make long-familiar music sound utterly fresh. Throw in their technical aplomb and rich, cohesive tone, in which every voice is significant, and you've got a pair of definitive statements. Happily, more are coming; This is merely volume one. Grade: A"
- Cleveland Plain Dealer