Classical Music: Arcadia Quartet — Weinberg String Quartets, Vol. 6

Weinberg String Quartets, Vol. 6

String Quartets Nos 10, 12, and 17; Aria, Op. 9; Capriccio, Op. 11

Arcadia Quartet Ana Török violin, Răsvan Dumitru violin, Traian Boală viola, Zsolt Török cello

Chandos CHAN 20363

Chandos.net

What a conclusion to the Arcadia Quartet's Weinberg series this volume is. The ensemble has spoken movingly of the moment they first encountered these string quartets—music, they say, that felt like "a glow of light surrounded by the darkness of the unknown"—and across these recordings they have made good on their ambition to dilute those shadows. This final volume crowns that mission magnificently.

Quartet No. 10 announces itself with a ghostly, taut authority, the opening violin line setting an emotional bar that the performance never fails to meet. There is a haunting quality to that first entry—sparing, searching—and the accompanying voices gather around it with the quiet inevitability of a gathering storm. The diminuendo that closes the third movement is a moment of almost unbearable delicacy, a held breath before the Allegretto releases the tension with a surge of forward momentum.

Throughout, the Arcadia brings a precision and technical command that never tips into the merely brilliant. Their playing is intense yet all-encompassing: the listener is not an observer but an inhabitant of the soundscape they create. Something close to osmosis takes place. The music doesn't wash over you; it passes through you until the line between hearing and feeling blurs, and you find yourself inside the notes on the page—not reading the score but being it. Each entry in Quartet No. 10 arrives with such magnetic force that it is difficult not to feel momentarily paralysed, suspended in the intensity of the moment.

The spell holds unbroken into Quartet No. 12, which could scarcely offer a more different opening gambit. Where No. 10 began in adagio introspection, No. 12 launches with a sprightly Presto—and the contrast is exhilarating. Credit is due here to the Chandos recording team, whose work throughout this series has been exemplary: every detail emerges with crystalline clarity, each inner voice audible and available to be savoured. The players capture the dynamic contrasts that are central to Weinberg's language with complete fidelity, rendering their command of light and shade without loss.

The first movement's ending is gripping in the truest sense—you are no longer a listener so much as a participant, drawn into the ensemble's confidence with such subtlety that the seduction is complete before you have noticed it happening. This performance defies simple description.

The Allegretto that follows has an expressive, atmospheric opening, and David Fanning's exemplary liner notes effectively identify the Bartók influences that surface here—once you hear them, these influences are entirely self-evident. Equally arresting is what can only be described as a Shostakovichian dialogue between first violin and cello: two voices in intimate, searching conversation that carries the full weight of that tradition.

Quartet No. 17 arrives in an unexpectedly genial mood, its Andantino announced by a lovely cello solo of quiet eloquence. The delicacy with which the piece leads into the Lento is marvellously hypnotic—music that seems to slow time itself.

Two bonus tracks round off the cycle with distinction. The Aria is a thing of beauty: melancholic, expressive, and shaped with a sensitivity that gives it the quality of a vocalise—a wordless song made tangible in string tone. The Capriccio, with its lilting waltz character, offers a more surprising face of Weinberg, lighter of touch but no less characterful. As miniatures, both are welcome and apt conclusions to a cycle that has done this composer's reputation immeasurable service.