There is no shortage on the market of fine
Beethoven quartet performances, but young groups keep coming to these works and making them their own. That is certainly true of the
Calidore Quartet, which here concludes its cycle with
Beethoven's
first six quartets, generally accounted the "early" quartets. They are impressive performances that show a set of players familiar with each other's thinking and able to respond to each other in an agile way. Sample right in the beginning in the first movement of the
String Quartet No. 1 in F major, Op. 18, No. 1, where the opening material is taken at a brisk pace but is quite subtly shaped. The opening of the
String Quartet in D major, Op. 18, No. 3, is beautifully delicate. The
Calidore is adept at adding a bit of rhythmic instability to the music without letting it fly out of control; there are any number of examples, but the first and third movements of the
String Quartet No. 6 in B flat major, Op. 18, No. 6, are especially relevant. The
Calidore Quartet's notes stress the ways the early quartets adumbrate the qualities of the later ones, and certainly, in some ways, this is true, but in the quartet that seems most to approach the drama of middle-period
Beethoven, the
String Quartet No. 4 in C minor, Op. 18, No. 4, the group is remarkably restrained. In general, this is not "Romantic" early
Beethoven, nor
Haydn-
Mozart early
Beethoven, but
Beethoven that takes each quartet as an individual entity, and that is all to the good. The quartets were recorded over several sessions at the Gore Recital Hall at the University of Delaware, where the
Calidore Quartet has served a residency. Normally, the site of a university recital hall as the venue would set off engineering alarm bells, but this one, under the famed producer
Judith Sherman, is different;
Signum Classics' sound is transparent, warm, and detailed. This strong
Beethoven release made classical best-seller lists in early 2025. ~ James Manheim
