Talking about string quartets

[amateur51]

Perhaps it is more engaging live - I have also noticed that I tend to prefer recordings of live performances.

Same here gradus

[Roehre]

...
I will never tire of orchestral music,but the older I get,the more I turn to chamber and piano works.

Same here, though I still start exploring to me unknown composers with their orchestral works (or works for larger forces, say from Kammersymphonie sized ensembles onwards) before turning to their chamber works.

[gamba]

Orchestral music, lectured to from platform.

String qt., listening to composer beside his own fireside.

[Padraig]

Orchestral music, lectured to from platform.

String qt., listening to composer beside his own fireside.

In a nutshell, gamba.

[gamba]

I could live without the Haydn symphonies - but the string quartets, NEVER !!!

I try always to start my day with one of his qts., from op. 9 onwards, & am rejuvenated & prepared to face whatever lies ahead.

I feel they should be made available on the NHS !

[verismissimo]

I could live without the Haydn symphonies - but the string quartets, NEVER !!!

I try always to start my day with one of his qts., from op. 9 onwards, & am rejuvenated & prepared to face whatever lies ahead.

I feel they should be made available on the NHS !

Gamba, this is definitely not an either/or situation. Must have both!

[EdgeleyRob]

Orchestral music, lectured to from platform.

String qt., listening to composer beside his own fireside.

I can relate to this,although I don't mind at all being lectured to from a platform,from time to time.

[EdgeleyRob]

I could live without the Haydn symphonies - but the string quartets, NEVER !!!

I try always to start my day with one of his qts., from op. 9 onwards, & am rejuvenated & prepared to face whatever lies ahead.

I feel they should be made available on the NHS !

I have been doing this for a few months now,but not just the 4tets,all things Haydn.
Very good for the soul,I think it may have been you that gave me the idea Gamba,many thanks.
Beats radio 3 breakfast.

[Serial_Apologist]

Perhaps it is more engaging live - I have also noticed that I tend to prefer recordings of live performances.

Studio recordings have often been doctored; however cleverly and discretely this is done, the interruption of "flow" is often subconsciously and after repeated listenings noticed.

[Roehre]

Studio recordings have often been doctored; however cleverly and discretely this is done, the interruption of "flow" is often subconsciously and after repeated listenings noticed.

Live recordings can be doctored too, especially if a work is performed more than once in a short space of time at one location. But even corrections made by the performers recorded afterwards are not unheard of.

[Serial_Apologist]

Live recordings can be doctored too, especially if a work is performed more than once in a short space of time at one location. But even corrections made by the performers recorded afterwards are not unheard of.

Yes, that is true.

[Bryn]

Live recordings can be doctored too, especially if a work is performed more than once in a short space of time at one location. But even corrections made by the performers recorded afterwards are not unheard of.

Indeed so. Many (most?) so-called 'live' recordings issued on CD might more accurately be described as "based on live performance(s), with supplementary material from rehearsal takes and re-takes". Nigel Kennedy made a comment about such conceits in the notes for his 'live' recording of the Beethoven Violin Concerto with Klaus Tennstedt.

[kea]

And who could forget Rosenzweig's 2nd?

Legend has it that if you stand in front of a mirror in a darkened room and whisper the words "An Inspector Calls" five times, it will appear. I've always been too frightened to try it.

As for recordings they're pretty much all studio patch-up jobs, even if it's only for a couple of missed notes. Only real guarantee of liveness is audience coughing/paper rustling/things falling etc noises, and people generally seem to not want those in their music... (and even then, where possible, they'll try to retake. So only real guarantee of liveness is if it's a bootleg/radio performance/etc released after the artist's death.)

- Anyway I am now listening to the Ravel string quartet and, in spite of its obvious nods to Debussy and surface coolness, it seems like one of a very few works of his that allows us glimpses beyond his veil of classical objectivity. (I can't think of any others at the moment, but I'm sure there are some.) So he may be another for the list.

[Richard Barrett]

Orchestral music, lectured to from platform.

String qt., listening to composer beside his own fireside.

Well I don't agree with that at all.

However I seem to have been mostly listening to string quartets since this thread began... must be getting old.

[kea]

Since Ravel seems to have put me in a quartetty mood I'm following him up with Schubert's G major played by the Hagens—a second performance from them (along with Beethoven Op 130/133, discussed earlier? or perhaps that was in the Arditti Qt thread) that I think is unsurpassed in the catalogue.

Of course Schubert's late quartets are not notably more intimate and personal than the quintet, or the late piano sonatas, or Winterreise, etc, but Lukas, Rainer, Veronika & Clemens do their best to make us believe they are for 50 minutes or so.