Gramophone Magazine
August 2024
Editor's Choice

Arcadia Quartet

String Quartet No. 6, Op. 35
String Quartet No. 13, Op. 118
String Quartet No. 15, Op. 124

The Arcadia Quartet’s acclaimed survey of Weinberg’s String Quartets continues with this fourth volume containing Quartets Nos 6, 13, and 15. Quartet No. 6 was composed in 1946 in Bïkovo, a town some twenty miles from the south-eastern perimeter of Moscow. Weinberg dedicated it to his friend Georgiy Sviridov, whom he had met in Shostakovich’s circle. The Quartet is a summit of his early achievements, and its musical language is strikingly advanced in relation to traditional Soviet works in the genre. It was banned by the authorities, and as a result, Weinberg wrote no more quartets until after the death of his mentor Shostakovich, in 1975. String Quartet No. 13 was composed in 1977 and dedicated to the Borodin Quartet. Like Shostakovich’s Thirteenth Quartet, written seven years earlier, it comprises a single movement lasting some fourteen or fifteen minutes, making it the shortest of all Weinberg’s quartets. String Quartet No. 15, from 1979, is in many respects the most radically conceived of all Weinberg’s quartets – certainly its nine-movement design suggests so. In expressive terms, too, it is one of the most elusive. The movements carry no titles or expressive directions, and, as in the case of his previous two quartets, Weinberg confines himself to metronome indications, avoiding all specification of character.

"Their underlying technical finesse and emotional commitment duly reinforce this music’s stature...The Arcadia go a long way to conveying the essence of what could seem oblique or intractable." - Gramophone Magazine, August 2024