Ernest Chausson - Concert for Violin, Piano & String Quartet; String Quartet

Ernest CHAUSSON (1855-1899)

Concert in D major for piano, violin and string quartet, Op. 21

String Quartet in C minor, Op. 35

Doric String Quartet 

Jennifer Pike 

Recorded: 4-6 July 2012

Recording Venue: Potton Hall, Dunwich, Suffolk

This disc finds Chausson writing in two somewhat different manners. The longer (39 minute) piece here is the Concert for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet of 1889-91. With memorable, long-lined melodies soaring over great sweeping rushes of sound colored by a rich harmonic palette, this piece embodies the essence of late Romanticism. Full of fresh invention and, despite its length, tight construction, this is a piece which, once heard, is likely to become a favorite, even for one who usually prefers orchestral music.

The shorter (28 minute) piece on the disc is Chausson's unfinished (it lacks a finale) C-minor String Quartet of 1899. (While writing the quartet Chausson took a break and went for a bike ride that killed him.) There's plenty of passion left in the 1899 edition of Chausson, but it's been balanced by a kind of musical discourse that requires greater musical mastery. In the Concert short musical motives are used as a unification device throughout the music, but they are laid over harmonies that progress by an independent logic and power. In the quartet, harmonies are more directly constituted by motives moving contrapuntally. The harmonic idiom is more chromatic and adventurous yet more chaste than that heard in the Concert. In short, the quartet doesn't necessarily disclose its best secrets on first hearing. Or second. Marvelous secrets it does contain, though, for them as sticks with it. The Doric String Quartet sound like they have playing this quartet for years.

The main competition to this disc may be a deservedly well-loved Columbia/Sony recording of the Concert by Itzhak Perlman and Jorge Bolet with the Julliard String Quartet. Pike and Poster and the Doric String Quartet are not comparable "brand names," but make no mistake, theirs is no-holds-barred performance, passionately virtuostic yet full of atmosphere and poetry. There's a sense of occasion here. What's more, the performance is recorded in a forward, superbly realistic soundstage that lets each instrument's sound bloom. By comparison, in the Columbia recording, as currently mastered, the dynamic range is narrower, strings sound thinner, sometimes slightly shrill, and the piano lacks immediacy and bite. The potential downside of engineering as good as Chandos's is that every technical flaw in a performance will be exposed. That's fortunately of no concern here. Indeed, in some quiet passages the precision and delicacy of the Doric's ensemble have to be heard to be believed.

For anyone who enjoys late Romantic music and has not yet encountered Chausson's Concert for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet, this disc will sweep you off your feet. Even if you already have the Perlman/Bolet/Julliard recording, you might want to consider this disc for its superb performances and recordings of both the String Quartet and the Concert. Highly recommended.