Danish String Quartet

Beethoven: String Quartet No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 131
Bartók: String Quartet No. 1, Sz 40 (Op. 7)
Bach, J S: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1. Fugue in C-Sharp Minor, BWV 849 (Arr. Förster for Strings)

The third volume of the Danish String Quartet's ongoing Prism series, which shows how the radiance of Bach's fugues is refracted through Beethoven's quartets to illuminate the work of later composers. "Beethoven had taken a fundamentally linear development from Bach," the Danes note, "and exploded everything into myriads of different colours, directions and opportunities much in the same way as a prism splits a beam of light." Here the quartet follow the beam from Johann Sebastian Bach's Fugue in c-sharp minor through Ludwig van Beethoven's String Quartet no.14 to Bela Bartok's String Quartet No.1. "A revelatory connected soundscape in which Beethoven's introspection feels more unsettling than usual." - BBC Music Magazine on Prism II "It's natural music-making....." - Gramophone Magazine on Prism II