Maybe we have become used to amazing bargains
in reissues, especially where Brilliant Classics are concerned.
That said, there can surely be little doubt that this must be
one of their best yet. All of the Brahms Quartets, many of Schubert’s
best known, and a representative selection of Haydn’s, together
with a brief taste of Mendelssohn’s, and all played by one of
the greatest groups of players of the last century. I have seen
it offered for less than Ł13, but it would be well worth having
for several times that.
The members of the Amadeus Quartet first played
together in 1947 and made their London début in the following
year at a concert underwritten by Imogen Holst. That concert
was very well received and from then until they disbanded on
the death of Peter Schidlof in 1987 they were rightly regarded
as one of the foremost Quartets in the world. They made many
studio and broadcast recordings, of which the present box contains
a selection of those set down in their early years. The notes
by Ates Orga give details of the background to some of these
recordings but not to all. The most interesting are those made
for the Westminster company, including Haydn’s “Seven Last Words”
and the Schubert “Quartett-Satz”. Some of the others were made
for HMV although the box appears to imply that all are licensed
from Deutsche Grammophon. Whilst it would certainly have been
interesting to know more about the origins of these recordings,
what matters is their substance, and that is unfailingly worth
hearing.
Although some of the recordings do show their
age in terms of boxy acoustic and occasional poor balance, I
had no difficulty in forgetting this very quickly to concentrate
on the performances. These are consistently well rehearsed and
thought through. Even where you might legitimately prefer other
performance decisions to have been taken there is never any
doubt about the careful consideration which obviously went into
them. They are very affectionate and finely characterized performances,
especially the mature Haydn Quartets where the players respond
unerringly to each quick change of mood and musical character.
These deserve repeated listening, and the set would be worth
having for the first three discs alone, although in fact the
same could be said of the other four. It may be that the very
sweet tone and occasional over-dominance of Norbert Brainin,
the first violinist, is somewhat old-fashioned at times, but,
as I said at the start, this set must be regarded as an amazing
bargain which can be recommended to anyone with the slightest
interest in these composers or performers.
There are good if at times too brief notes by
Ates Orga. There seems to be no consistent policy in respect
of repeats, but presumably that was dictated largely by the
time available on the original records. All in all, a very desirable
issue which must surely be followed in due course by their superb
Mozart and Beethoven recordings.
John Sheppard
see also review by Jonathan
Woolf
for details
Amadeus Quartet (Norbert
Brainin (violin I); Siegmund Nissel (violin II); Peter Schidlof
(viola); Martin Lovett (cello)) 
