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Favorite Classical String Quartets

When I started listening to Classical Music as a teenager over 50 years ago I quickly became seduced by the sounds of a string quartet.  My school library had a Seraphim 3LP set of Beethoven Middle Period Quartets with the Hungarian SQ (this was in stereo; they had recorded them in mono as well).  Op. 59/1, the first of the Razumovsky Quartets, was my seductress:  those long soulful cello lines, with the viola weaving in and out, the violins then sweetly taking over the main themes, and then all the instruments trading places-I was hooked.

 59/3 has a second movement dominated by the cellist who sounds like a jazz walking bass, and that furious fugal finale.  The Harp Quartet in that with its flying pizzicatos was another revelation.

  Beethoven’s late quartets are another thing entirely, and took a few generations for nineteenth century listeners to absorb.  Mozart and Haydn invented the genre and a lot of their best music is in their quartets.

  The aforementioned Classical Period composers are generally thought to have represented the apex of the genre, but I have always been fascinated by Dvorak, Borodin, and Shostakovich, all of whom seemed to luxuriate in the special sonic world of the string quartet.

 

 Other favorites?

  T

mahler123
kirkwallace's avatar
kirkwallace
405 posts
 

This Tacet recording, for example, i think is very nice: https://tidal.com/album/282879318

pdspiegel
73 posts
 

I too love string quartets.  My tastes skew modern so here are some favorites:

  • Ravel Quartet
  • Charles Ives’s whimsical Quartet No. 2
  • Ruth Crawford Seeger String Quartet, 1931 - The shimmering 3rd movement is stunning
  • The stylish Kronos Quartet released a number of fascinating collections in the ‘80s.  Winter Was Hard is a fave.  Jazz fans may want to check out their Monk album with Ron Carter on bass that I very much enjoy.
  • The recent Complete Quartets from John Zorn (better known as a jazz artist) is quite good IMO.
  • While not modern chronologically, I’m fascinated by Beethoven’s forward looking late quartets that my Baroque and Classical loving friends find near unlistenable.
mahler123 OP
4,100 posts
 

@pdspiegel 

 

yes the Crawford Seeger work is wonderful.  I actually encountered it about 50 years ago on a Nonesuch LP, I think paired with the Barber.

 

The Kronos discs are interesting ways to push the traditional boundaries of the string quartet.  I liked some of them and was put off by a few others.

 

  Beethoven’s late string quartets are wonderful.  I particularly love the Op.131 which still sounds modernist today.

 

  Bartok’s corpus fascinate me.  I still haven’t come to terms with all of them.  The Shostakovich Quartets are in my opinion his finest music, and I say this as a collector of multiple symphony cycles by him

mahler123 OP
4,100 posts
 

@kirkwallace 

 

Sitkovitsky originally made a string trio arrangement and then expanded it to quartet.  Try the Emerson or Juilliard Quartet recordings 

larryi
4,629 posts
 

I like Ruth Crawford Seeger's Quartet too, as well as the others you listed.  The John Zorn collection has some really interesting works and some I don't like quite as much.  Still, it is a very worthwhile set.  

Some other modern works worth mentioning:

Elizabeth Maconchy- 13 String Quartets (No.3 is short and worth sampling)

Katia Saariaho: 2 quartets by a living composer

Glass-String Quartet No. 3

Ligeti: String Quartets

Franghiz-Ali Zadah-Mugam Sayagi (a Kronos Quartet recording)

Luigi Nono: Fragmente-Stille

Reich: Different Trains (primarily a string quartet with looping, siren horn effects, recorded speech, etc.)

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