B?la Bart?k: The 6 String Quartets - Tak?cs Quartet

B?la Bart?k: The 6 String Quartets - Tak?cs Quartet

B?la Bart?k: The 6 String Quartets - Tak?cs Quartet
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Music CD Cover

Orchestra: Bela Bartok
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1998-01-13
Music Label: Decca
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
  1. I. Lento
  2. II. Allegretto (Introduzione)
  3. III. Allegro vivace
  4. Prima parte: Moderato
  5. Seconda parte: Allegro
  6. Ricapitulazione della prima parte: Moderato - Coda: Allegro molto
  7. I. Allegro
  8. II. Adagio molto
  9. III. Scherzo
  10. IV. Andante
  11. V. Finale
Music CD 2
  1. I. Moderato
  2. II. Allegro molto capriccioso
  3. III. Lento
  4. I. Allegro
  5. II. Prestissimo, con sordino
  6. III. Non troppo lento
  7. IV. Allegretto pizzicato
  8. V. Allegro molto
  9. I. Mesto - Piu mosso, pesante - Vivace
  10. II. Mesto - Marcia
  11. III. Mesto - Burletta
  12. IV. Mesto

Free Music Notes for B?la Bart?k: The 6 String Quartets - Tak?cs Quartet

Free Music Review: angularity, precision, angst
Hit: 4 Stars

One popular dictionary of classical music refers to B?la Bart?k's 'driving, anxious rhythms, angular melodies, brackingly sharp dissonances, and folklike modal harmonies'. All of which to say, Bartok does not make for easy listening.

If one must or chooses to fall into the hands of Bart?k's six string quartets, he may do no better than to surrender himself to a very long drive and the expertise of the Hungary-rooted Tak?cs Quartet. After hearing the Tak?sc perform in Indianapolis--their vigor in performance means that one is left as much with a *visual* as an aural impression--I invested in this acclaimed presentation of the full cycle of Bart?k string quartets.

Something was perturbing the European soul in the first quarter of the 20th century. History suggests a number of motors of this angst, bloodstained and otherwise. There in Budapest, Bart?k was working it out in music.

One is struck by the torment of soul that comes through in the early B?rtok, a tumultuous note that is sounded with striking clarity and discipline by the Tak?cs. Bart?k would eventually emigrate to America and mellow out a bit, but not hint of such sweetening is apparent here. He is interpreted here with precision.

Upon moving on to the Beethoven cycle played by the same quartet, one breathes more deeply, relaxes, indeed even marinates in that earlier master. Not here. Not now.

If your destiny is to know the worried, worrisome Bart?k, start here. You may end here as well.

B?la Bart?k: The 6 String Quartets - Tak?cs Quartet Poster

If chamber music suggests merely sedate and timid pleasures, let the Tak?cs Quartet guide you through the profound experience that this medium can convey--above all in the hands of a composer as rich in imagination and innovative in temperament as B?la Bart?k. In some ways his cycle of string quartets traces not only his personal creative evolution but the deeply tragic zeitgeist of half a century as well. The Tak?cs Quartet plays with an unfaltering sense for the lifeblood of this music in performances that are both gutsy and ethereal. --Thomas May
B?la Bart?k has emerged as one of the few modern masters who continue to be regularly performed and recorded. The six string quartets that span his career from 1908 to 1939 are generally regarded as this century's unsurpassed addition to the medium, and they provide an intimate entr?e into the world of their withdrawn and enigmatic composer. With this cycle, the Tak?cs Quartet confirms its reputation, against some very fierce competition, as possibly the most cogent, exciting exponent of this music today. They achieve an unusually successful synthesis of the quartets' polarizing components: lyrically haunting "night music," passages of grotesquely ironic humor, and, in the Sixth Quartet, an unrelentingly pervasive sense of desolation and farewell. In the process, the Tak?cs players give visceral life to the extremities of technique Bart?k's scores demand. These range from exaggerated glissandi to pizzicati made to snap violently against the fingerboard, at times producing a sound more akin to a percussion battery than a string quartet. The ensemble convincingly traverses Bart?k's creative evolution, from the hothouse romanticism of the First Quartet to the Third's densely packed modernist fury and the palindrome structures of the Fourth and Fifth Quartets. Richly nuanced with local color, these accounts are among the best available on disc and will likely become standard-setters. --Thomas May

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