Danish String Quartet

PRISM V (CD)

The Danish String Quartet bring their highly acclaimed Prism project to its conclusion. In each volume of this series a particular Bach fugue is connected to a late Beethoven quartet which, in turn, is connected to a quartet by a later master: “A beam of music is split through Beethoven’s prism,” in the Danes’ words. “The whole approach invites active, committed listening,” The Guardian observed. “The group plays with virtuosity, intensity and tenderness.”

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The project has been eight years in the making. Now on the fifth and final volume, Johann Sebastian Bach’s chorale prelude Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit “opens up like a flower” (as Paul Griffiths writes in the liner notes) to preface Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 16 in F major. Anton Webern’s early String Quartet, composed in 1905 – and inspired both by Beethoven and Schoenberg – follows, and the programme returns to Bach with Contrapunctus 14 from The Art of the Fugue.

TRACK LIST

J.S. BACH: Chorale prelude 'Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit', BWV 668 BEETHOVEN: String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Op. 135 WEBERN: String Quartet (1905) J.S. BACH: The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080 - Contrapunctus 14