MDG Scene  MDG 903 1798-6

Stereo/Multichannel Hybrid

Classical - Chamber

Tchaikovsky: String Quartet No.3; Children's Album, Op 39 (arr for String Quartet by Rostislav Dubinsky)

Utrecht String Quartet


Emotional Depth
Peter Tchaikovsky is in a class all by himself when it comes to expressing great human emotions in music that grips the heart. Even years before the incomparable Pathétique he wrote a string quartet anticipating the symphonic depth of departure, mourning, and death with an intensity going to pith and marrow. The Utrecht String Quartet has recorded this rarely performed masterpiece on the second volume of its complete edition of Tchaikovsky’s quartet literature, along with a unique work: the highly imaginative Children’s Album, genuinely in the original Russian quartet version!

Death’s Toll
As so often in Tchaikovsky, the death of a beloved human being stands at the beginning of the compositional process. An introductory song of lament rises painfully in a large line and ends in the hopeless loneliness of a solitary tone and then returns at the end of the movement. A magnificent coincidence: the third movement appears to echo the funeral march from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, but it was only some six months later in Bayreuth that Tchaikovsky first had the opportunity to note the striking resemblance.

Childhood Dreams
Life in miniature – Tchaikovsky’s Children’s Album transports the listener and performer alike into a fantastic fairy-tale world with reminiscences of The Nutcracker ballet rendered particularly apparent in the magical presentation of the Utrecht String Quartet. A childlike life world and fantasy world unfold. The witch Baba Yaga does her mischief, perhaps under the spell of morning prayer or church attendance; the beloved doll dies and is buried; there is a frolicking celebration; and on a little European tour one can become acquainted with the songs and dances of foreign peoples.

Dramatic Experience
Great cinema for great moments – naturally the most recent production of the Utrecht String Quartet has been produced in the finest SACD technique. In the unique, 3D 2+2+2 sound picture an intensive you-are-there feeling results, leaving nobody unmoved and giving free rein to the emotions.