Release Date: 21 January 2022
Label: C-Avi
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 4260085532056
Genres: Classical Chamber Music
Description
This album is the volume 4 of the planned complete recordings of Mozart's string quartets by the Armida Quartett.
Highly acclaimed and welcomed by the international press already the Vol. I – III. "This is an accomplished recording of the great quartets from the Vienna decade, but, perhaps more importantly, a vital one of the earlier works, demonstrating not only by the young Mozart's gifts but also the unique power and imagination with which the teenage composer was able to deploy them. (Gramophone Magazine April 2021)
The Armida Quartet endeavours to find dissonances lying like sleeping metaphors on the seabed of Mozart's music, in order to bring them to the surface and back to life – yet without making them too obvious. In so doing, the musicians commit themselves to follow the original sources, which they are intensely studying in collaboration with expert musicological counsel. But they are also committed to their chosen name, "Armida", which evokes a widespread opera subject stemming from Torquato Tasso's epic poem Gerusalemme liberata ("Jerusalem Delivered"). In that well-known story, Armida stands for what we would call cognitive dissonance. The Christian knight from the West and the pagan beauty from the East are fascinated with one another and fall in love. Despite her infatuation, however, Armida must surely also be an evil sorceress, since she is distracting Rinaldo, the crusader, from his holy mission of war. Armida's final submission is sealed once and for all with a battle victory and a baptism: this is obviously a Western projection we need to view with a greater deal of nuance. With its apparently irresolvable dissonance arising from contradictory feelings, the fear caused by the seductive outer appearance of beauty, and the ostensibly unappealable validity of cultural norms, the fictional Armida material is a true aesthetic and cultural litmus test…… ….. (Excerpt from the booklet notes by Hansjorg Ewert)
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
"…the confidence and accuracy they bring to their performances make this another enticing instalment in their continuing quartet." – Gramophone, March 22
"There was a time when listening to Mozart's quartets it was difficult to avoid a sense of Dresden china clinking gently in the background – not any longer!" – Performance 5 Stars / Recording 5 Stars, BBC Music Magazine, March 22
Tracklisting
Andreas Willwohl & Daniel Heide
Laurence Kilsby & Ella O'Neill
Kilian Herold, Barbara Buntrock, Florian Donderer, Tanja Tetzlaff
Kathrin Zukowski, KammerMusikKoln
Katharina Konradi, Catriona Morison, Ammiel Bushakevitz
Antje Weithaas, Denes Varjon
Premysl Vojta, Florence Millet, Ye Wu
Herbert Schuch, WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne
Armida Quartett
Armida Quartett
Armida Quartett
Armida Quartett
Armida Quartett
Armida Quartett
