At first glance, Berg and Verdi make a weird combination: fine if you go for extreme contrast, or quartets by opera composers, or have been waiting to add these two particular works to your collection. Fine, too, if the new disc wipes the floor with the competition.
My own feeling is that the Vogler Quartet gets close to such floor-wiping, but doesn't quite manage it. They are a young, prize-winning group, whose technical assurance and highly burnished sound reflect their period of study with the LaSalle Quartet. The many difficulties of the Lyric Suite holds no terrors for them, and they are attentive and sensitive to the need to make Berg's myriad expressive markings sound as natural as possible, as well as allowing the textural strands he marks for particular prominence to emerge with due clarity. In much of this they are highly successful. The problem is that in some of the movements the basic atmosphere—even the basic tempo—is less persuasive than in the Schonberg Quartet recording (Koch-Schwann). The Vogler Quartet's Andante amoroso is relatively stilted and unyielding, their Presto delirando lacks some of the necessary delirium (the Schonberg Quartet's glissandos are more frantic) and their Largo desolato is so slow that it becomes more an exercise in self-control than an expression of heartbreak. In addition, the sound on the new disc is rather too resonant and insufficiently intimate in ambience for a quartet recording. Koch-Schwann give the Schonberg Quartet a less bright but perfectly clear acoustic.
The Vogler Quartet bring a stronger sense of urgency to the opening of the Verdi quartet than the Accardo team (Dynamic/Pinnacle), only to sound over-cautious in the short Prestissimo and rather over-emphatic in the finale. Here, as in the second movement, the Accardo group make more of the music's contrasts with a fully-rounded sound in a more naturally focused recording. What this new RCA disc shows beyond doubt is that the Vogler Quartet are already an expert team, capable of challenging the best. They will surely achieve even more in the future.'