The project of recording all Spohr's string quartets has now reached Volume 6, and two of his finest works in the genre. They are part of a set of three, and were written when he had settled contentedly into Dresden musical life in 1821. This was the year of Der Freischutz, whose author had given him a cordial welcome; there may, indeed, seem to be a touch of the Weber of Preciosa in the 'Spanish' finale. However, the two composers had, nine years previously, been much taken with the singing of some Spanish soldiers garrisoned in Gotha, and Spohr, who had one of them quartered in his house there, noted various melodies for future use. This is a lively movement to conclude a lively and graceful quartet. It is in the quatuor brillant vein which Spohr, as one of the greatest violinists of his day, enjoyed and of which he was a master. The tradition, Parisian by origin, of giving so much prominence to the first violin does limit the expressive range, but Spohr handles it skilfully and inventively, both in display passages and in allowing the violin to take a lyrical, almost operatic lead in the pleasant Andante and with the warm second subject of the first movement. The note quotes a suggestion that this may have found a home when he abandoned work on Der schwarze Jager on learning that Weber was setting the same subject.
The First Quartet is less close to the brillant style, and its manifold lyricism suggests a manner that was to be explored by Mendelssohn, with whom Spohr was to be so often compared. Even Mendelssohn at his most fluent would surely have been pleased to have written the opening movement, and at his most elegant the Adagio; the scherzo does not have a Mendelssohnian fleetness of foot, but rather a contained energy which seems too strictly contained in the performance by the New Budapest Quartet. However, they are fine Spohr players, and continue to give charming and eloquent performances of music that merits these qualities.'