Classic Borealis

Mendelssohn (Composer), Beethoven (Composer), Schubert (Composer), Borealis String Quartet (Orchestra), Joel Stobbe (Performer), Nikita Pograbnoy (Performer), Yuel Yawney (Performer), Patricia Shih (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Joel Stobbe, Nikita Pograbnoy, Yuel Yawney, Patricia Shih
• Orchestra: Borealis String Quartet
• Composer: Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Schubert
• Audio CD (November 5, 2003)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Skylark Music
• ASIN: B00012YZA8
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #394,871 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Allegro vivace assai

2. Allegro assai

3. Adagio

4. Finale: Allegro molto

5. Allegro assai

6. Introduzione: Andante con moto - Allegro vivace

7. Andante con moto quasi Allegretto

8. Menuetto Grazioso - Trio

9. Allegro molto

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Borealis String Quartet amazing on first CD, December 5, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Classic Borealis (Audio CD)

The three-year-old Borealis String Quartet swung through the Atlantic provinces last month on a Debut Atlantic tour that turned heads and widened eyes.

Where did they spring from so suddenly, and already so fine and so fully formed? Virtually unheard of on the East Coast, these four young musicians work a day job as quartet in residence at the University of British Columbia. This is their first CD and it is, frankly, amazing.

Violinists Patricia Shih and Yuel Yawney, violist Nikita Pogrebnoy and cellist Joel Stobbe bank a wealth of international experience between them. Put together by Shih at the suggestion of UBC professor Andrew Dawes, the much admired first violinist of the Orford Quartet, and a frequent performer at the Scotia Festival of Music, the four play together as though to the manner born, with - for the serious music fan - a mouth-watering affinity.

On their inaugural CD they play Mendelssohn (F Minor Op. 80), Schubert (C Minor, Quartettsatz) and Beethoven (C major, the third of the set of three Razumovsky quartets).

There is an eagerness to the way this energetic foursome pounce on fast tempos. The Mendelssohn, his last quartet, is full of nervous agitation and feverish rush. The Borealis play it flawlessly, but not relaxed. It's as if they were test-driving a fine car, driving it fiercely into the curves, rejoicing in the way it corners, accelerates and holds the road.

The Schubert presents an example of beautiful ensemble playing though it's perhaps a little hurried in the sense that the phrases might relax into their space more. They play well, but don't really let us know what they think.

I heard them play the Beethoven live at the St. Cecilia 15th Anniversary concert a week or so back. Here they absolutely mean what they say, with meticulous articulations, dynamic shadings of all kinds, not just the dramatic ones, with a nice understanding of what Beethoven means when he writes "sf" under a note, sometimes taken by less subtle players for permission to whack the note as though applying a flyswatter to a wasp.

Their takeovers are pure magic - animated lines passing from violin to viola to cello and back again, seamless in spite of the passages being butted flush against each other without the help of an overlapping note.

The tempo of the last movement is unbelievably fast, notes darting all about like fireflies trying to tatter the dark with a million dots of lightning.

Stephen Pedersen / Arts Reporter