Album

Have there been enough performances of the string quartets of Haydn and Dvorák? Have there been enough performances of the songs of Gershwin and Porter? The answer, of course, is no: the works themselves are endlessly fresh and eternally appealing and any performance which expresses those essential qualities will always be welcome. In these 2004 recordings of Haydn's C major Quartet Opus 54 No. 2 and Dvorák's A-flat major Quartet Opus 105, Poland's Szymanowski Quartet admirably captures those qualities in performances of uncanny naturalness. A highly skilled and technically adept group, the best thing about Szymanowski's performances is their sense of improvisation: not that they are improvising but that they know the works so well that they seem to be creating more than re-creating the music.



Have their been enough performances of the string quartets Grazyna Bacewicz? Not bloody likely—outside of her native Poland, there've been next to no performances and fewer recordings of any of Bacwicz's seven quartets. But after listening to the Szymanowski Quartet's wholly persuasive performance of her neo-classical but tonally adventurous and emotionally compelling three movement Fourth Quartet from 1951, one can only wonder why. As they did in Haydn and Dvorák, the Szymanowski seem to be creating the music as much as performing it. Caught in Avie's very warm but slightly too distant sound, this disc will be a boon to those who know Haydn's C major Quartet and Dvorák's A-flat major Quartet as well as to those who don't know Bacewicz's Fourth Quartet but think that it sounds intriguing.











© James Leonard, All Music Guide

CD 1
(Franz) Joseph Haydn Composer String Quartet in C, Hob.III:57, Op.54, No.2 Work 19:52 Szymanowski Quartet Ensemble
1	1.Vivace	6:59			$0.99
2	2.Adagio	3:33			$0.99
3	3.Menuetto: Allegretto	3:41			$0.99
4	4.Finale: Adagio	5:39			$0.99
Grażyna Bacewicz Composer String Quartet No.4 Work 22:39 Szymanowski Quartet Ensemble
5	1.Andante. Allegro	9:54			$0.99
6	2.Andante	6:25			$0.99
7	3.Allegro giocoso	6:20			$0.99
Antonín (Leopold) Dvořák Composer String Quartet No.14 in Ab, Op.105 Work 33:22 Szymanowski Quartet Ensemble
8	1.Adagio ma non troppo. Allegro appassionato	8:13			$0.99
9	2.Molto vivace	6:17			$0.99
10	3.Lento e molto cantabile	8:18			$0.99
11	4.Allegro non tropo	10:34			Album Only