Three very different minds grappling with the intricacies of four-way musical dialogue. Takemitsu, a habitual aesthete wandering in the thick of sensual Bergian textures; Barber, a compelling New World Romantic revelling among memories of Dvorak and, perhaps, Nielsen; and then Britten, a bold, incandescent voice in prime condition, proclaiming during the year (1945) that also witnessed Peter Grimes and The Holy Sonnets of John Donne. All are summoned among the sonorous ranks of the Tokyo Quartet for performances that combine rigour, warmth and textual acuity. It's a compelling mix and if the components appeal, then best to leave it at that, sit back and enjoy. Certainly, the standard of playing is uniformly high, the recording pleasingly full-bodied and the programme itself well chosen. But if comparisons are of the essence, then it should be admitted that various alternatives make equally strong claims. In the Britten, for example, the Britten Quartet present the Second Quartet as the 'singable after the unspeakable', Britten having endured a traumatic confrontation with the Nazi concentration camps at around the same time. Being susceptible to the power of modulation and instrumental interchange (especially near the start of the closing Chacony), the Brittens capture the music's core tragic sense of bewilderment, although the central Vivace has an almost Stravinskian incisiveness. In the Barber, there's formidable rivalry from the Emerson Quartet, a swifter, more assertive reading, less plush in tone than the Tokyos but equally intense and especially appreciative of the music's fresh, open-air themes. However, the new version of the now-famous Adagio is particularly lustrous (broad, too—at 8'01''), and may well tip some scales in its favour.
Of course, all three CDs are the result of very different programming concepts: the Tokyos offering ''the responses of three composers to the challenge of tradition'', the Emersons, a conspectus on American quartet writing in the first half of the century, and the Brittens, the complete string quartets by their namesake. Which makes a choice relatively easy and the chances of disappointment correspondingly remote.'