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Shostakovitch: The Complete String Quartets (Box Set) Reviews
Shostakovitch: The Complete String Quartets (Box Set) Reviews
| 14 of 14 people found the following review helpful  These recordings are truly amazing - there are none better, By A Customer This review is from: Shostakovitch: The Complete String Quartets (Box Set) (Audio CD) I have listened to many versions of these masterpieces and these recordings, for me, best capture the emotional power and breathtaking beauty of the music. This man wrote such music!! The players are fully in control at all times, take extraordinary risks and succeed each time, and have a rare ability to convey on a very personal level the intense human dimension of these works. Listening to the Manhattans play Shostakovich is an exciting, sometimes harrowing and always rewarding experience. There are 15 of these pieces and they are all great. This series of recordings allows the listener to transverse the cycle in order, although it might be dangerous to listen to too many in a row! They are quite intense. 9 of 9 people found the following review helpful Manhattan SQ plays Shostakovich:Top-notch, musical, intense, By This review is from: Shostakovitch: The Complete String Quartets (Box Set) (Audio CD) It has taken some time in a new millenium to begin to be able to see Shostakovich' music more clearly overall, since none of these 15 string quartets is particularly easy to play, let alone to program in live concerts. It used to be that hearing one was something of a genuine rarity, outside Russia itself, where groups like the legendary Beethoven Quartet, or the earlier Borodin Quartet, were known for their advocacy of ... and devotion to ... Dimitri Shostakovich. Of course, to play these quartets in the Russia/USSR of their days was something of a dangerous stand to take. Shostakovich went in and out of political favor, especially with Joseph Stalin at the helm; yet DS kept writing music. By the turn of the century, more and more subsequent generations of chamber quartet string players had studied and performed these works. It is common now to admit that all of these fifteen string quartets by Shostakovich are among the very greatest to have been written in the twentieth... Read more 8 of 8 people found the following review helpful I agree..., By This review is from: Shostakovitch: The Complete String Quartets (Box Set) (Audio CD) ... completely with drd's essay and with the recommendation by Music Fan. These are sadly underated performances. I would not part with the first Borodin set, available on Chandos, nor with the recordings of 14 and 15 by the Glinka and Beethoven Quartets I bought to 'complete' the incomplete Borodin set. But that does not diminish my enthusiasm for these recordings.I do prefer this Manhattan set to the second Borodin edition, released here on BMG, but currently not available. The sound of the Manhattan set is perhaps the best available -- including the recent Emerson set -- and I have come to admire and cherish the performances projected by that vibrant, living sound. It has been said that the Borodin capture more of the ethnic elements in the music -- the strains of gypsy violins, of Jewish folk music and klezmer, ehoes from Tashkent -- whatever. How can a quartet named Manhattan NOT be in tune with ethnic diversity in music? At any rate, my admittedly western ears, hear an... Read more |
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