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Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Complete String Quartets

5/31/2024, 12 Tracks, 1:18:52

Featuring

  • Susanne Rabenschlag
  • Matthias Ellinger
  • Karin Wolf
  • Zoltán Paulich
  • Verdi Quartett
  • Ralph Vaughan Williams

Did you know?

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Performer Biography

The Verdi Quartett, founded in 1985, studied with the Amadeus Quartet and attended masterclasses with the Moscow Shostakovich Quartet and the Stuttgart Melos Quartet.

Source: Booklet

Recording & Production

This recording of Ralph Vaughan Williams's string quartets marks the end of the Verdi Quartett's long and successful career, which concluded with their dissolution in 2021.

Source: Booklet

Composer's Artistic Vision

Vaughan Williams studied with Maurice Ravel in Paris in 1908, learning to orchestrate 'according to colours and not lines,' an experience he described as 'emotional' and 'completely new'.

Source: Booklet

Composition History

The String Quartet in A minor was partly inspired by Vaughan Williams's friendship with viola player Jean Stewart, to whom he dedicated the work with the note 'Price: 1000 kisses'.

Source: Booklet

Composition History

Vaughan Williams's String Quartet in C minor was written in the winter of 1898, after he and his wife spent time with the Gatty brothers in Hooton Roberts, Yorkshire, where they often played music together.

Source: Booklet

Composer Biography

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) studied at the Royal College of Music in London and Trinity College in Cambridge, where he met his first wife, Adeline Fisher.

Source: Booklet

Critical Reception

Vaughan Williams's String Quartet No. 1 in G minor was initially rejected by English critics, with The Times complaining of 'harmonic progressions which torture the ear'.

Source: Booklet

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