This release completes a cycle of three by the Dante Quartet, covering the eight string quartets of Charles Villiers Stanford. They've generally been well played, and so it is here. Stanford, like Brahms with the symphony, delayed his first attempts at quartet composition until he was 40, intimidated by the imposing models of Beethoven and his successors. That being so, listeners will be surprised to hear that the String Quartet No. 1 in G major, Op. 44, is pretty retro in style, its emulation of Mendelssohn (who still cast ...
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This release completes a cycle of three by the Dante Quartet, covering the eight string quartets of Charles Villiers Stanford. They've generally been well played, and so it is here. Stanford, like Brahms with the symphony, delayed his first attempts at quartet composition until he was 40, intimidated by the imposing models of Beethoven and his successors. That being so, listeners will be surprised to hear that the String Quartet No. 1 in G major, Op. 44, is pretty retro in style, its emulation of Mendelssohn (who still cast a strong shadow across the British Isles in 1891) interrupted only by some harmonic transitions that would have been a stretch for that composer. The String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 45, also falls squarely into Germanic traditions, although it's closer to Schumann than Mendelssohn. There is little of the Irish influence (Stanford was Irish) that George Bernard Shaw thought the strongest aspect of Stanford's music. The slow movements are the strongest, with intensely dramatic...
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