BERG, WEBERN & SCHÖENBERG Chamber Music

“the Belceas' muted, breathless approach is no less effective than the extrovert technical accomplishment and timbral extremes of the LaSalle Quartet…their Verklärte Nacht bucks the trend of recent slow and solemn performances…and is fitted closely to Dehmel's lascivious storyline.” --Gramophone Magazine, October 2015

“The Belcea Quartet, plus Nicolas Bone (violin) and Antonio Meneses (cello), play passionately and precisely.” --Sunday Times, 2nd November 2015

With a complete recording of the Beethoven quartets that caused a stir and enchanted concert halls everywhere, the Belcea Quartet is henceforth considered one of the finest quartets in the world. ‘The principle characteristic of their playing is [...] intensity,’ wrote BBC Music Magazine in 2013.

With this new recording, the Quartet tackles another summit of chamber music: the Second Viennese School. With their passion and technical abilities, this breathtaking music, which drastically changed the history of music, rings out in all its force and mystery.

SCHOENBERG Verklärte Nacht

“their new account under Heinz Holliger unfolds at relatively steady tempos, with more compositional logic than late Romantic passion...[Holliger's] deployment of a relatively small string line-up and moderate tempos...enable one to discern the many cogent inner workings of this haunting score.” --BBC Music Magazine, April 2014 ***

“Holliger, who has made a speciality of the Second Viennese School, provides an object lesson in refined yet powerfully intense interpretation...The strings of the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra...make a well-integrated ensemble and the excellent recording keeps even the most turbulent textures lucidly balanced.” --Gramophone Magazine, February 2014

“This beautifully achieved disc presents two of the Second Viennese School figures in a profoundly tonal light. Lustrous late-Romantic works by Schoenberg...enclose a darkly touching account of Schoenberg’s rather rare E flat minor Second Chamber Symphony.” --Sunday Times, 5th January 2014

“the superb accounts of both the earlier Verklärte Nacht, which is starkly, sometimes almost expressionistically dramatic, and Webern's gorgeous single-movement Langsamer Satz, composed in 1905 while he was a pupil of Schoenberg, make the disc thoroughly worthwhile.” --The Guardian, 12th December 2013 ****