Belcea Quartet

The two works have attracted numerous fine recordings, but here a luxury cast of the Belcea Quartet, Tabea Zimmermann and Jean-Guihen Queyras bring us a really special one – full-toned, warm-hearted... — BBC Music Magazine, May 2022, 5 out of 5 starsMore…

Recorded in the warm, generous acoustic of Schloss Elmau, this meeting of two flagship quartets sounds less like a joint venture than eight players sharing a single imagination...Few octet recordings... — Gramophone Magazine, March 2026More…

The main interpretative obstacle in the First Quartet is how to gauge the progression of its first three movement so the finale is a culmination without obliterating that went before. The Belcea... — Gramophone Magazine, July 2019More…

The traditionally ceremonial key of C major takes on a different hue in Schubert's Quintet. …the playing is on the loftiest level, ensemble always transparently clean; and the ability to think,... — Gramophone Magazine, December 2009More…

Corina Belcea’s willingness to soar and slide with such sensual abandon makes it deliciously seductive… The second Szymanowski a decade later takes us even further with its post-Ravel impressionisms,... — BBC Radio 3More…

This CD is the work of a highly talented, exceptionally well-integrated ensemble. Their excellent balance is highlighted by crystal-clear recording. This is quartet-playing of great musicality,... — Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010More…

They play with extraordinary strenuousness, very unlike the Alban Berg Quartet with whom they studied. The Belceas re-enact the creative torments of the composer to a degree where you feel their... — BBC Music Magazine, February 2013, 4 out of 5 starsMore…

In 2003 the Belcea Quartet recorded a nerves-on-a-knife’s-edge account of Brahms’s C minor Quartet (Op 51 No 1) for EMI. Here, more than a decade on, their conception retains its essential ferocity,... — Gramophone Magazine, October 2016More…