Nikolai Myaskovsky - Complete String Quartets Vol. 2 (Taneyev Quartet)

Information

Composer: Nikolai Myaskovsky

• (01) String Quartet No. 4 in F minor, Op. 33 No. 4
• (05) String Quartet No. 5 in E minor, Op. 47
• (09) String Quartet No. 6 in G minor, Op. 49

Taneyev Quartet

Vladimir Ovcharek & Grigory Lutzky, violins

Vissarion Solovyev, viola

Josef Levinson, cello

Date: 1982-83/2007

Label: Northern Flowers

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Review

The second volume of Northern Flowers' reissues of Russian Disc's series of recordings by the Taneyev Quartet of Nikolay Myaskovsky's 13 String Quartets intelligently and generously couples the composer's Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth works in the form. (Russian Disc had oddly and inexplicably coupled the Fourth with the First, the Fifth with the Third and the Sixth with the Second and the Tenth.) As in previous recordings, the Taneyev Quartet throws itself fully into the music. Though the tone is wiry, the sonorities lean, and the intonation occasionally shaky, the players are wholly committed. The music sounds like the missing link between Rachmaninov's late Romantic gloom and Shostakovich's early modernist despair. All three works here are in minor keys and four movements, and all three range tonally and emotionally from the fuliginous to the despondent. Though too dark for everyday listening except by the incurably depressed, anyone who admires Myaskovsky's symphonies will certainly want to hear his quartets, and anyone who enjoys Shostakovich's quartets may want to check out Myaskovsky's. Recorded in the mid-'80s, the stereo sound here is close, hard, and acerbic, but surprisingly realistic.

-- James Leonard, AllMusic

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Nikolai Myaskovsky (20 April [O.S. 8 April] 1881 – 8 August 1950) was a Russian and Soviet composer. He is sometimes referred to as the "Father of the Soviet Symphony". Myaskovsky wrote a total of 27 symphonies (plus three sinfoniettas, three concertos and works in other orchestral genres), 13 string quartets, 9 piano sonatas as well as many miniatures and vocal works. He is professor of composition at Moscow Conservatory from 1921 until his death, and há an important influence on his pupils. His students include big names such as  Aram Khachaturian, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Rodion Shchedrin and Boris Tchaikovsky.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Myaskovsky

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The Taneyev Quartet was formed in 1946 by four second-year music students at the Leningrad Conservatory who all shared the birth year of 1927. After graduation (1950-1951) the four players became members of the Yevgeny Mravinsky-led Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra. In the 1960s the ensemble developed a close relationship with Shostakovich, and in 1974 performed the premiere of his Fifteenth Quartet. The Taneyev Quartet has made numerous recordings, including the complete sets of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, and Taneyev's quartets, mostly for the old Soviet-era Melodiya label.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/taneyev-quartet-mn0001663421

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