Customer Reviews

Franck: Sonata for violin in A; String quartet in D

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The two works by Cesar Franck on this disc date to the end of the composer's career, with the Violin Sonata (1886) being one of the most acclaimed and popular chamber works in the entire classical repertory, and the String Quartet in D (from 1890), being a relatively obscure work.

This disc would probably have rated 5 stars but I found the sound engineering of the Gewandhaus Quartet performance of the String Quartet to be problematic. The session dates from 1983 and the "Warsaw Pact" engineering is lacking in color and fairly harsh. You may not have heard of the Gewandhaus Quartet, but they are an outstanding East German quartet that has recently recorded a very good set of Beethoven Quartets (I strongly recommend their amazing recording of the Beethoven Op. 18 set), ironically, with audiophile-level sound. After hearing the Juilliard Quartet do a decent job with the Franck, I saw the Gewandhaus had recorded this and jumped at it. The Gewandhaus interpretation is clearly better than the Juilliard's - it's more imaginative, detailed and technically proficient - but the sound quality prevents me from recommending this rendition. The search continues.

The recording of the Franck violin sonata dates from 1987 and is in better, although not outstanding, sound. I hadn't heard of the two performers, Heinz Schunk and Annerose Schmidt, but they are strong musicians who deliver a very good performance, one that I certainly prefer to that wayward David Oistrakh/Sviatoslaw Richter versin, and probably a better one than the Midori CD. The piece can get off track due to slow tempi and a little too much rubato. Instead, Schunk & Schmidt hold a steady tempo and deliver very good results, in particular in the slow "Ben moderato" (track 7), which is performed beautifully here. A performance to be heard.

CDs are a group effort and unfortunately, one set of the contributors were unable to hold up their end of the bargain here.