Paul Hindemith: String Quartets
CD 1: String Quartet No. 2 in F minor, Op. 10 (1918) / String Quartet No. 3 in C major, Op. 16 (1920)
CD 2: String Quartet No. 5, Op. 32 (1923) / String Quartet No. 6 in E flat (1943) / String Quartet No. 7 in E flat (1945)
CD 3: String Quartet No. 1, Op. 2 (1914-15) / String Quartet No. 4, Op. 22 (1921)
Amar Quartet: Anna Brunner, Violin I (Quartets No. 2-7), Violin II (Quartet No. 1) / Igor Keller, Violin I (Quartet No. 1), Violin II (Quartets No. 2-7) / Hannes Bärtschi, Viola / Péter Somodari, Cello
►NAXOS 8.572164-5 (2012 / 2015)
Good things come to those who wait! The interpretations of the string quartets of Hindemith already recorded by the Amar Quartet in 2009/10 – with cellist Péter Somodari, since 2012 solo cellist of the Vienna Philharmonic – are now complete. This ensemble from Zurich, founded in 1987, named itself after the Amar Quartet (founded in 1922) in 1995. The original Amar Quartet was assembled out of necessity in 1921 at the first Donaueschingen chamber music performances in order to play the premiere of Hindemith's String Quartet, Op. 16. The sensational success of this premiere encouraged the musicians to continue performing together as a quartet. This was a stroke of luck for the contemporary art of the quartet, for the musicians intensively devoted themselves to the cultivation of modern chamber music, including Bartók's Opp. 7 and 17 and Schönberg's Opp. 7 and 10. The ensemble was named after its first violinist Licco Amar; the second violinist was Walter Caspar, Paul Hindemith played the viola, with the composer's brother Rudolf Hindemith or Maurits Frank on the cello part.
The musicians of the "new" Amar Quartet have accepted, as an "obligatory legacy", the task of recording the complete quartets of Hindemith. One can verify the same characteristics of quality in the "young" Amar Quartet that were noted by enthusiastic contemporaries in the "old" Amar Quartet: youthful élan, brilliant technical ability and well-balanced ensemble playing.
The four musicians succeed perfectly in presenting, with intensive sound production, the individual quartet style that Hindemith developed during the 1920s. The compositional development of these works is to be evaluated before the backdrop of Hindemith's familiarity with the playing technique of the instruments and his profound knowledge of the quartet repertoire. In particular, the musicians of the Amar Quartet have been "infected" by the joy of playing found in Hindemith's quartets, the fun of letting themselves go and enjoying the motor rhythms, often at breakneck speed. In contrast to these "extroverted" aspects, we hear the "melancholy devoid of expression" of several slow movements (in Opp. 22 and 32, for example), the depths of which are fully explored by the musicians with great sensitivity. Equally impressive is the way the interpreters bring out the individual lines of contrapuntally interwoven passages and convey them with great clarity. Convincing, too, is how the ensemble interprets the Quartet in E-flat composed in 1943 - by demonstrating its strands of compositional tradition, thereby revealing this opus as the quintessence of Hindemith's art of the string quartet.
This complete recording gives the lie to the prejudices, still in circulation, that Hindemith's music is aloof or academic. It takes its place effortlessly in the standard-setting recordings of the Kocian Quartet (1995) and the Juilliard Quartet (1996-1998).
HJW