Composer: Fritz Kreisler, Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Performer: Hegel Quartet
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: ARS Produktion
Catalogue: ARS38345
Release: 2022
Size: 307 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: cover
Kreisler: String Quartet in A minor
01. I. Fantasia
02. II. Scherzo
03. III. Einleitung und Romanze
04. IV. Finale
Korngold: String Quartet No.3, Op. 34
05. I. Allegro moderato
06. II. Scherzo
07. III. Sostenuto
08. IV. Finale
Korngold: Suite from Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing”, Op. 11 (Version for String Quartet)
09. II. Mädchen im Brautgemach
10. III. Holzapfel und Schlehwein
11. V. Hornpipe
The members of the Hegel Quartet grew up in different parts of the “New World”: Australia, United States of America and Canada. In search of the roots of the musical traditions in which they grew up, each of them made their own way to Europe during their studies. It was pure coincidence that they met in mid-life, having already absorbed so much of the legendary musicians who make the European concert scene so rich.
Composers Fritz Kreisler and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, like so many other Jewish artists, escaped the turmoil of the World Wars in the last century and eventually became citizens of the United States. These two great artists, and many others in similar life situations, created a thriving cultural paradise in their new homelands – for example, in South America, Canada, or Australia – that produced generations of artists. Even at the height of his success as a Hollywood film composer, Korngold greatly missed Vienna and its opera houses, and it seems that he died of a broken heart after unsuccessfully trying to re-establish himself in 1950s Europe.
The Hegel Quartet’s new recording of some of their chamber works works is also accompanied, in a modest way, by a desire to repatriate, as it were, Kreisler and Korngold to their beloved Europe by four emigrants from the opposite direction.