Since leaving EMI and Nimbus, the Medici Quartet have been recording under their own label, and the two present issues attest to the success of their enterprise. This Quartet shows clear enthusiasm for Schubert's music, and the sheer ebullience with which they approach the three chamber works by this composer recorded here generally produces results that are very rewarding indeed.
In the Death and the Maiden Quartet, in particular, taut ensemble and fine dynamic control come together in a highly compelling performance. The first movement has plenty of improvisatory sweep, and the variation-form second movement is well paced and sharply in focus. However, in the final movements, which are full of vitality, a slight tendency to over-excitement produces a degree of waywardness.
Melissa Phelps joins the team as second cellist in the C major Quintet, D956. There are some fine I moments here, such as the wonderfully whispered pianissimo pizzicato in the first movement. Like the Alban Berg Quartet, the Medici omit the exposition repeat. To my ears, though, the rather too relaxed tempo in the third and fourth movements deny the music's inherent vitality. The less than ideally responsive studio acoustic does not help either.
In the numerous recordings of the String Quintet, few offer another work as coupling. This disc, however, like the Takacs, has the advantage of including another Schubert chamber work. Schubert wrote his B flat Quartet, D112 in 1814 and, in the manuscript, he proudly wrote that he had completed the first movement in only four and a half hours. The present performance shows off the precociousness of this score from the 17-year-old composer. As ever, the dynamics are finely judged, and the youthful optimism of the work's sunny finale is charmingly expressed.
The non-studio recordings are generally better in these two issues, and this is especially clear in Dvorak's American Quartet, coupled here with Schubert's Quartet in D minor. Though they do not quite match the sheer refinement of, say, the Hagen Quartet who also benefit from richer and more robust recorded sound, the Medici here give an evocatively atmospheric performance of Dvorak's affectionate, disarmingly frank, American-inspired score. The canoe-trip of the second movement is vividly portrayed, and the infectious locomotion of the finale brings the Quartet warmly to its conclusion.
These recordings, then, are distinguished by strong musical commitment and technical panache, and any reservations about their sonic quality are easily forgotten in the light of this. The joie de vivre which all the performers evidently share gives these performances the feel of 'live' recordings which is most alluring.'