CD ECM Records Gidon Kremer, Kremerata Baltica - Schubert: String Quartet G Major

2005

Gidon Kremer - vioara
Kremerata Baltica

Franz Schubert: String Quartet G Major D 887 / Op. 161

Pizzicato, Supersonic
Luister, CD des Monats

For much of the time, Kissine scores the music almost as a concerto grosso, with phrases regularly tossed from a solo quartet to the surrounding ensemble. The scheme opens the door for multitudinous shades of timbre, always pursued with the object of teasing out meaning and purpose from Schubert’s leisurely, sometimes elusive, epic. The effect is like viewing a familiar statue from an unfamiliar position; facets half hidden suddenly loom before you. It’s a fascinating and often enlightening interpretation, and beautifully played.
Geoff Brown, The Times

This was Schubert’s last quartet, a vast unpeopled canvas, part bittersweet, part disorienting. The aching Andante movement opens as a melancholy lullaby before Schubert breaks the mood with stabbing discords, here cued by Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica, who deliver a measured, deeply pondered interpretation. Interesting how, rather than fatten Schubert’s textures, Kissine’s arrangement has the opposite effect, focusing the sense of desolation while tenderising its few moments of respite. Kremer and his band play crucial repeats, bringing the total timing to 55 minutes. It’s wonderful, but not for the faint-hearted.
Rob Cowan, The Independent

The arrangement reinforces the power of this masterpiece and Kremer inspires a deeply felt and expressive performance. … This is a fascinating experiment and, though unlikely to supplant the original quartet version, it is well worth hearing.
Edward Greenfield, Gramophone

Manfred Eicher’s smooth and pristine production of Kremerata’s execution of the Schubert String Quartet expands across a super-wide but likewise three-dimensional soundstage, inviting a virtual stroll through the forest of violins, violas, violoncellos, and double basses. Long regarded as orchestral in conception, the Quartet’s virtues – including rich melodies, expressive harmonies, broad dynamics, the isolation of voices within a unified ensemble identity, and a stirring lucidity of moods – all benefit from almost perfectly balanced sonics and the dramatic and kaleidoscopic yet graceful magnification provided by Victor Kissine’s brilliant orchestration and the Kremerata’s gorgeous interpretation.
Derk Richardson, The Absolute Sound

Generally, I do not favor full string-ensemble transcriptions of string quartets, but this one is different. Victor Kissine’s carefully graded dynamics and instrumentation alterations seem to me to help clarify some of Schubert’s opaque and impenetrable writing. This transcription is not a simple case of making multiple copies of parts and having massed string sections play them in unison … In contrast, Kissine has both added to and subtracted from what Schubert wrote, not in actual content, but in context. … This is a very fine performance of something that would not ordinarily be to my taste; but in this case, I make an exception. This transcription strikes me as uncommonly successful. And of course, fine playing by Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica ensemble, and a very fine recording, contribute mightily to that success.
Jerry Dubins, Fanfare

What delights me most is that in this technological, mechanistic world there is a place in classical music for people who will dare to make something beautiful at the risk of violating accepted norms.
Althouse, American Record Guide – January/February 2006