![David Oistrakh String Quartet, Daniel Austrich, Alexander Buzlov – Tchaikovsky: Souvenir de Florence, Op. 70 – Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4 (2022) [FLAC 24 bit, 96 kHz]](https://imghd.xyz/images/2022/11/20/oir2w0pyl5e1b_600.md.jpg)
David Oistrakh String Quartet, Daniel Austrich, Alexander Buzlov – Tchaikovsky: Souvenir de Florence, Op. 70 – Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4 (2022) [FLAC 24 bit, 96 kHz]
Despite its title, Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence, composed in 1890, owes more to the Russian tradition than to the Italian school. Full of strong contrasts, very intense, and extremely demanding for the performers, it is one of the cornerstones of the string sextet repertoire. Nine years later, with a vigour rivalling that of Tchaikovsky’s work, Schoenberg composed another masterpiece of the genre, Verklärte Nacht. This dark and feverish musical tableau, inspired by Robert Dehmel’s poem of the same name, takes Romantic expression to its apogee.
The Oistrakh Quartet, featuring four of today’s most outstanding Russian musicians, is perfectly at home in these two great works, recorded with the violist Daniel Austrich and the cellist Alexander Buzlov.
![David Oistrakh String Quartet – Beethoven, Schubert, Shostakovich: String Quartets (2023) [FLAC 24 bit, 96 kHz]](https://imghd.xyz/images/2023/03/01/srj4b5mqvphwa_600.md.jpg)
David Oistrakh String Quartet – Beethoven, Schubert, Shostakovich: String Quartets (2023) [FLAC 24 bit, 96 kHz]
‘Blithe ignorance of the future cataclysm’ is the subtitle originally chosen by Shostakovich for the first movement of his ‘war quartet’, String Quartet no. 3, which he considered one of his finest works.
The subtitle sets the tone for a composition that, nourished by popular folklore, appears to stage the inexorable confrontation of opposing forces. The same tension, the same razor’s-edge atmosphere is to be found in Beethoven’s Quartet op. 18, no. 4, and in Schubert’s unfinished Quartet, no. 12, generally known as the Quartettsatz.
![Aaron Copland – Aaron Copland: Piano Concerto, El Salón México, Appalachian Spring, Old American Songs (2014/2022) [FLAC 24 bit, 96 kHz]](https://imghd.xyz/images/2022/09/18/osllpazc7recb_600.md.jpg)
Aaron Copland – Aaron Copland: Piano Concerto, El Salón México, Appalachian Spring, Old American Songs (2014/2022) [FLAC 24 bit, 96 kHz]
‘Appalachian Spring’ and ‘El Salón Mexicó’ are archetypical of what many people consider to be the sound of American music, evoking the vast landscapes, cowboys and pioneer spirit. Yet, in the 20th century perhaps only Stravinsky was as adept in as many styles as Aaron Copland [1900-1990]. His Piano Concerto, first performed by Serge Koussevitsky, is a good example of Copland the modernist but he also wrote chamber music, ballets, operas and film scores, as well as teaching, writing and latterly conducting. The winter of 1950 saw Copland take a break from writing his superlative ‘Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson’ and, inspired by a Pears and Britten recital in late 1949, he took five of his favourite American songs and arranged them for voice with piano. Pears and Britten liked them so much that they gave the premiere together at the Aldburgh Festival in 1950.