Adorations
Works by Haydn, Barber, Mendelssohn & Price
Isidore String Quartet
Delos DE3622 64:02 mins
The Isidore Quartet describes its new album as a celebration of chamber music at its essence, and certainly the players have put together an attractive programme.
Haydn’s Quartet Op. 20 No .2 begins in strikingly original fashion with two string trios in succession, the first giving the melody to the cello above an accompaniment for viola and second violin, and the second transferring the music to the three upper instruments.
The Capriccio slow movement is a dramatic recitative that eventually gives way to an aria of Gluckian sweetness (in the only miscalculation on this finely played disc, the violin’s melody here is swamped by the viola accompaniment). So broad is the design that Haydn breaks it off in midstream, and allows the minuet to follow without a pause. The finale is a quadruple fugue, with Haydn keeping all four balls in play throughout.
Mendelssohn’s Op. 44 No. 3 is perhaps the least familiar among his half-dozen mature string quartets, and it’s true that the manic energy of its finale can grow tiresome. But the Scherzo is scored with typical transparency and delicateness, and the slow movement, whose initial aching dissonance takes the music in a new direction each time it recurs, is remarkably beautiful.
Samuel Barber’s Adagio, more familiar in its version for string orchestra, originally formed the slow movement of his only string quartet; while Florence Price’s attractive Adoration, which lends the album its name, is a shorter piece written for organ, though sounding a good deal warmer when played on strings, as here.
