Rating: 4/5
Review:
A bit overdone for me
I found the Doric's recording of Schubert's two great
quartets Rosamunde and Death And The Maiden quite hard to take, but tried this
because they are a fine quartet and I hoped this would be more to my
taste. I found it better but still had
the same overall difficulties with it.
Really what I find difficult in these interpretations is
what seems to me to be over-dramatic playing.
Schubert's music quite often undergoes quite wild variations of mood and
key. Just the opening of this quartet is
a small example, as that warm G major chord jumps quickly, suddenly and rather
disturbingly into G minor – not a conventional modulation, by any means. The Dorics handle this pretty well, but at
other times I think they overdo it badly.
The music has a lot of these striking and unexpected shifts in it which
do need interpretation, but they are dramatic in themselves and to me don't
need the over-emphatic hammering they sometimes get here.
This is a personal feeling, of course. Lots of people probably won't agree, and I
see that this recording has just been nominated for a Gramophone Award, so it's
plainly highly regarded by people who know what they are talking about. I have rounded 3.5 stars up to 4 because
there is a lot that's good about the recording, but personally I'll be sticking
to my versions by The Lindsays, the Belcea Quartet and others.
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