Beethoven - The Complete String Quartets / Alban Berg Quartet

Beethoven - The Complete String Quartets / Alban Berg Quartet | Ludwig van Beethoven, Alban Berg Quartet, ... | Excellent modern interpretation

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Beethoven - The Co...

	Beethoven - The Complete String Quartets / Alban Berg Quartet Ludwig van Beethoven, Alban Berg Quartet, ... EMI Classics, 1999 average customer review:based on 32 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Just beautiful

What a splendid set. I'm familiar with a number of other recordings--Cleveland, Takacs, Emerson, Budapest, Kodaly, etc.--but this is the best overall to my taste. The tone and sound are just beautiful. There is plenty of passion but no harshness. Plenty of gentleness and simply beauty when they are called for. Lots of dynamic range and varied tempi. On almost every movement (except for me Op 59 #1 second movement) they make the music come across in a fresh way that one can return to over and over.
Also, beautifully recorded.
Can't imagine anything better (though the Auryn quartet is wonderful, as well.)

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Excellent modern interpretation

Though I've been weaned on the Quartetto Italiano's style, with a good dose of the Quatuor Végh's second traversal of the cycle, this is the set I return to most. Compared with those two, the ABQ (Alban Berg Quartett) tend to adopt quicker tempos, reveling in the kind of precision that attracts adjectives such as "dispassionate" or "soulless." Nothing could be further from the truth. Unlike similar modern interpreters such as the Emerson Quartet, the ABQ understands flawless technique to be a pre-requisite for tackling these pieces, not an end in and of itself. They also highlight Beethoven's revolutionary bent--their readings are more in line with their namesake than with, say, Schubert or Mendelssohn. The "Grosse Fuge" and Op. 131 are particularly convincing, but there is not a dud in the set. And if you absolutely must have your Beethoven old-fashioned, then dig all the way back to the Busch Quartet for watershed performances.

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The Top Cycle

This set is one of those opportunities to get in on wonderful performances at a great price. I had to weigh in because I was surprised to find some less than stellar reviews of this set- one reviewer below actually wrote a review for a completely different recording, giving this one 3 stars not even having heard it.

I found this set unerringly well recorded, unmistakably well played, and all together a great deal- 7 full length quality recordings of the greatest string quartets ever written for less than $45! There are performances that are as good (for example, check the Quatuor Mosaiques readings of the Op. 18 for a great sounding period performance take), and those are certainly collectable for the die-hard or purist, but I have yet to find a complete set of the Beethoven quartets that I would give a higher recommendation than this one.

** Update 2.6.06 - the Takacs Quartet Beethoven cycle (though so far only issued as three separate multi-disc packages) is well worth the time of anyone interested in these works, albeit at a much higher total price.

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Great music - quality control problem with CDs

These are wonderful renditions of these Quartets. I had worn out my records and finally decided it was time to get a CD version of this fantastic music. The first thing that came as a surprise was when Disk Number 4 would not load into Itunes on my Mac. I was able to get it to work on my Wife's PC and copy it onto a new CD and get past the problem that way, but it seemed odd my MAC could not read this disk. Then I discovered all the tracks on each disk are mislabeled after the first quartet. This meant manually correcting each entry on every disk (7 of them) which was labor intensive. I love the music but any potential buyer who purchases these with the intention of loading them into their IPOD should be aware of this quality control problem.

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Ordinary

I purchased this product after reading the reviews of several customers. As the product offered the complete string quartets, I anticipated delivery with alacrity. I was, however, rather disappointed. The compositions are, naturally, of the highest order. The performance of the Alban Berg Quartet is hardly resplendant. Illustrative is the performance of the C sharp minor which lacks the passion essential in a work of this complexity. Though offering only the late works, I prefer the recordings of the Emerson Quartet.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, page 5, 6, 7

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