# Favourite String Quartets



## Efraim (Jun 19, 2009)

Sorry, I have several favourite SQs, mostly depending on the work. For Beethoven the best for me is the Smetana Quartet (Supraphon LP-s)(except for their F Major Op. 59 which is pale). They have not a very brilliant sonority, compared to some other famous quartets, but this is the last thing that bothers me about the works I like with them. Their interpretations of Beethoven is the most intelligent, revealing a profound understanding of these works. On the contrary, their playing of Haydn's The Bird and The Lark is uninteresting, Brahms' Clarinet Quintet utterly colourless and bad. - 
For Haydn: D Minor Op. 9, D Op. 17, B Minor Op. 33, all of Op. 50: Festetics Quartet. - Op. 76 & 77: Mosaiques. Op. 20: various quartets, I have a hard time to decide which one is the best for this or that work, Buchberger, Mosaiques, Ulbrich (old Eterna LPs), or Pellegrini; for C Major : perhaps Dekany Quartet (old VOX LP), the most tragic and the most moving reading of this work, in spite of or independently from an ugly sound; Salomon Quartet (mainly for A Major). The Buchberger Quartet is always excellent. Each of these teams has a different style and all are convincing. There are now scores of fantastic quartets on an astonishingly high level, both technically and from the point of view of the originality, that the old famous quartets didn't reach by far, especially for Haydn, who is being "re-invented" in our days. (Elysee Quartet, Eben Q., Jerusalem Q. ...)
I have only one record of the Panocha Quartet (Haydn's Op. 33 Nos 4-6). Simply perfect!
I have an incredibly rich interpretation of Brahms' two quartets Op. 51 by the Bartok Quartet, on an old Hungarian LP, from about 1968. All the other interpretations I have became poor, little interesting after it: Budapest, Italian, Cleveland... Beethoven's Op. 59 quartets are also the greatest with them, but not so his last quartets.
Beethoven Op. 18 No 6: the Janacek Quartet (on Supraphon). They make of this work, the traditional nickname of which is "The melancholy", the most humorous work I ever heard, and they are right against the tradition. As for their other interpretations, I don't like them. They have a very original but heavy and somewhat clumsy manner of playing.
I have an excellent A Minor of Beethoven with an Artis Quartet, Vienna. (Sony)
Schubert's G major: the Novak Quartet. By far the most dramatic, the most expressive. Also good with Alban Berg Quartet, unbearable with the Juilliads.
Ravel: the Parrenin Quartet.
Bartok: Juilliard and Hungarian quartets.


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