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Beethoven: String Quartets Reviews
Beethoven: String Quartets Reviews
| 36 of 39 people found the following review helpful  Perhaps Definitive, By Amazon Verified Purchase This review is from: Beethoven: String Quartets (Audio CD) The Budapest String Quartet for over thirty years was reguarded as simply "the" string quartet. For over a decade they were the string quartet in residence at the Library of Congress. They used Strads from the Library's collection. They performed the entire Beethoven cycle every year they were there. All these performances were recorded. The 1952 performances were released on columbia from those cycles.For twenty years this particular stereo recording cycle was unavailable in the united states. It was "the" cycle all knowledgable collectors wanted, and found outside the united states or from lp transfers. The 1952 performance is tighter, and faster. However, this stereo cycle has more warmth and breadth. And the stereo sound really captures the sound of the instruments. I too, own and frequently listen to every recorded Beethoven Cycle. Until I acauired this set I considered several cycles as among the best: The Vegh quartet of the seventies, the Hungarian... Read more 18 of 18 people found the following review helpful The Real Thing!, Amazon Verified Purchase This review is from: Beethoven: String Quartets (Audio CD) This would seem to be the first domestic CD release of the complete Beethoven stereo set recorded late in the Budapest's career. I had not heard these recordings since playing them on LP at least 25 years ago. What a revelation on CD! Yes, some lapses in perfect intonation can be heard (by Roisman particularly), and they make some less than gorgeous sounds, but so what? I have been listening to the Berg and Takacs play Beethoven recently. They are fine groups, but there is a homogenization of sound and interpretation that is all too common today in the performance of so-called classical music. These recordings connect us to an era when Beethoven really MEANT something. They sound very idiomatic to me in a way that the "historically correct" gang doesn't begin to touch. Rhythms and attack are incisive, structure is tight and dynamic contrasts are strong and used very expressively. The melodies sing and the dance rhythms swing. The miracle is that they were recorded in excellent... Read more 56 of 67 people found the following review helpful  This is the complete 1958-61 stereo cycle, By This review is from: Beethoven: String Quartets (Audio CD) This is a 8 cd set of the 1958-1961 stereo cycle this quartet recorded for Columbia Records in New York City. They were originally released as three 3 LP box sets. This was the quartet's second complete cycle, the other being the one done in the early 1950s. This stereo set has not been available in complete form on cd in the US before now that I know of. It was issued in Japan some time ago. The packaging for this set is very bare bones: No booklet or any indication on the outside the box that this is the stereo cycle. Each cd comes in a flimsy cardboard sleeve with only the year of recording date listed. This seems to be the Sony way with all of their reissues the last couple years. Note that a few of these were issued previously on cd in the US in the Sony Essential Classics series: the three Op. 59, the Op. 95 and the Grosse Fuge, Op. 133 quartets. I haven't listened to the whole set yet, but I can say so far that this set may be only for fans of this quartet. Their earlier... Read more |
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