Weinberg: String Quartets Vol. 5

With this album, containing String Quartets Nos. 3, 9 and 14, the Arcadia Quartet presents the penultimate release in its highly acclaimed complete edition of Mieczysław Weinberg’s string quartets. As with the previous volumes, the works come from different periods of his compositional development, offering a varied programme that stands on its own. The 3rd Quartet, composed in 1944, can be regarded as his first ‘mature’ quartet and consists of three movements. The 9th Quartet, composed in 1963, comes from his self-styled ‘star decade’, during which his works were championed by a distinguished group of enthusiastic artists, including Emil Gilels, Leonid Kogan, Kirill Kondrashin, Rudolf Barshai and the Borodin Quartet. The 14th String Quartet dates from 1978, three years after the death of Weinberg’s great friend and mentor Dmitri Shostakovich: a period in which Weinberg questioned and renewed his artistic identity. The album also contains the short Improvisation and Romance from 1950. The Arcadia Quartet performs worldwide and has appeared, among other venues, at the Budapest Spring Festival, the Cité International des Arts (Paris), the Alte Oper Frankfurt, Pollack Hall (Montreal), the Royal Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Wigmore Hall (London), Suntory Hall (Tokyo), the Musikverein (Vienna), the Aldeburgh Festival, the Konzerthaus Berlin, the North Norfolk Music Festival and the Salle Gaveau (Paris).