Arnold Schönberg’s Second String Quartet counts among the Viennese composer’s masterpieces, and represents his breakthrough into atonality. The use of a high soprano voice singing verses by Stefan George in the last two movements makes its performance rather rare and problematic (and provoked a famous scandal the night of the premiere in Vienna, on December 21st, 1908). Soprano Christiane Oelze’s pure intonation and ethereal tone ideally combines with the deep, bittersweet sonorities of the Leipzig Quartet. The German musicians play this cosmic work with acute intelligence and clarity, while their sense of rubato helps them to unveil the music’s most secret and sorrowful expression. The homogeneity of their ensemble playing seems hard to match. Altogether, this performance is one of the most gripping and inspired committed to disc.
The same qualities are at work in the hard-boiled, dodecaphonic Fourth Quartet (1936), Schönberg’s last composition in the medium. Here the composer completely abandons the morbid post-romantic textures in favor of an energetic, fast-driven, rhythmically nervous and complex style. With its exquisitely balanced voicing and intense, dark tone, the Leipzig Quartet completely transcends the work’s difficulties, and presents it in its most tragic light. The recording is excellent, with the exception of a few hard-edged spots in the loudest passages.
