Special offer. Gerhard: Complete String Quartets & Chaconne for Solo Violin
Arditti Quartet
this First Quartet is approachable and fascinating...[the Second] is quintessential Gerhard...This is a fine disc, superbly played and well worth purchasing but I suspect that a little prior...
Special offer. Gerhard: Complete String Quartets & Chaconne for Solo Violin
Arditti Quartet
Purchase product
this First Quartet is approachable and fascinating...[the Second] is quintessential Gerhard...This is a fine disc, superbly played and well worth purchasing but I suspect that a little prior...
About
Born in Catalonia and Arnold Schönberg’s sole Spanish student, Roberto Gerhard is, after Manuel de Falla, the boldest and most brilliant representative of the music of his country. Forced into the exile by the Spanish civil war, he became a British citizen and spend his last years in Cambridge. Although they never met, the connection with the Arditti Quartet seems to have been preordained, as illustrated by this superb recording of what can be considered the composer’s masterworks.
Contents and tracklist
Awards and reviews
16th September 2013
this First Quartet is approachable and fascinating...[the Second] is quintessential Gerhard...This is a fine disc, superbly played and well worth purchasing but I suspect that a little prior knowledge and interest in Roberto Gerhard might help before doing so.
3rd March 2013
The complete string quartets by the wonderful, somewhat neglected Catalan-British composer are only two, but significant achievements, highly enjoyable...The Ardittis couldn’t be more at home than in its luminous, disjointed idiom. Irvine Arditti appends a vigorous account of the 1959 solo Chaconne.
24th February 2013
This is challenging, but really worth the effort...[Gerhard's] gritty but always sensual music recalls a modernist version of Manuel de Falla; there is a toughness in these two string quartets which is matched by an electric ear for colour and nuance...The Arditti play with total command; violinist Irvine Arditti adds the massive Bach-like solo Chaconne, compelling.
