Egon Wellesz - String Quartets Nos. 3, 4 & 6 (Artis-Quartett Wien)

Information

Composer: Egon Wellesz

• (01) String Quartet No. 3, Op. 25
• (05) String Quartet No. 4, Op. 28
• (10) String Quartet No. 6, Op. 64

Artis-Quartett Wien
Peter Schuhmayer, violin
Johannes Meissl, violin
Herbert Kefer, viola
Othmar Müller, cello

Date: 2008
Label: Nimbus

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Review

The polarities of the life of the composer Egon Wellesz are to be found in Vienna and in Oxford. That there are these polarities is down to the rise of Nazism. The Third and Fourth quartets are products of the Vienna years. The Sixth belongs to Oxford written after he had spent almost a decade in that city.

Wellesz dallies with 12-note technique but despite having studied with Schoenberg his musical expression is much freer than superficial assumptions might indicate.

The Third Quartet bustles with ideas and styles. The second movement looks to the airy blossom-laden sweetness of the Ravel quartet where the first is more densely intense and with a much wider embrace of atonality. The Sehr gedent is openly lyrical - heavy with a probing and slightly tense cantilena. A chuckling and largely unclouded Anmutig bewegt concludes proceedings with some of the will-o’-the-wisp caprice of the much later Bliss Violin Concerto.

The Fourth Quartet was premiered by the Kolisch in London in 1922. Here incursions from France and Hungary are absent. Instead the work is more completely rooted in the Second Viennese school. The fourth of the five movements is spiky and excitingly guttural.

These are utterly convincing performances in resinous sound. Only those averse to the occasional intake of the players' breath will find anything to grumble about.

The Sixth Quartet was premiered at the Library of Congress by the Loewenguth Quartet on 12 November 1948. It is a concentrated four movement work - the shortest of the three here. The third movement is an affecting rocking-lapping Andante pressed forward with considerable power.

There are nine Wellesz symphonies all tackled by CPO and there are nine string quartets. The big Third Quartet dates from the dying throes of the Great War.

This disc offers three of the nine quartets. I hope that the Arttis and Nimbus will record the rest and will complete the Karl Weigl quartets begun with numbers 1 and 5 on NI 5646. After all they have recorded all four Zemlinskys across NI5563 and NI5604.

The excellent notes for this issue are by Calum Macdonald with assistance from Hannes Heher who also prepared this edition of the Third Quartet.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

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Egon Wellesz (21 October 1885 – 9 November 1974) was an Austrian, later British composer, teacher and musicologist. Wellesz studied in Vienna under Arnold Schoenberg, purportedly his first private pupil, as well as Guido Adler. Wellesz left Austria for England in the wake of the Anschluss. Altogether he wrote nine symphonies and an equal number of string quartets. Other compositions by him include operas, an octet, piano and violin concertos (one of each), and a suite for violin and orchestra. Despite his composing, Wellesz remains best known for his extensive scholarly contributions to the study of Byzantine music.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egon_Wellesz

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Founded in 1980, the Artis Quartet studied at the University of Music in Vienna, and with the LaSalle Quartet at the College Conservatory of Music, Cincinnati, USA. In 1985 the ensemble began its international career, performing in the most important venues and centres of music. Their cycle of concerts at the Wiener Musikverein has been an annual event since 1988. The Quartet has been welcomed at prestigious international festivals, such as Salzburger Festspiele and Wiener Festwochen. They have recorded more than 30 CDs for Nimbus Records, Sony Classical, CBS/Sony, Orfeo, Accord and Koch/Schwann.
https://www.artis-quartett.at/e/main.html

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