Michelangelo Quartet @ LoC

Haydn, String Quartets, op. 77 ("Lobkowitz"), Quatuor Mosaïques (Naïve, 2000) Shostakovich, String Quartets, Mandelring Quartet (Audite, 2011)

Charles T. Downey, Too many weak moments for the skilled Michelangelo String Quartet (Washington Post, November 9)

The 90th-anniversary season of free concerts at the Library of Congress introduced a new ensemble to the Washington area on Saturday afternoon. The Michelangelo String Quartet, formed in 2002, had somehow eluded my notice up to this point. With its relatively new second violinist, Daniel Austrich, who replaced founding member Stephan Picard in 2012, the group’s weaknesses temper enthusiasm for its strengths.

Beethoven appears to be one of the quartet’s specialties, as it has performed the complete cycle of the composer’s string quartets and recorded some of them. The F major “Razumovsky” Quartet (Op. 59, No. 1) was the highlight of this concert, as the group negotiated the music’s complexity and breadth with skill. A reduced and balanced tone from all four players produced a playful second movement, while the third movement had the patience and intensity that were missing in some of the other pieces on the program, as Beethoven peeled apart the layers of his music’s themes to inspect them from all sides... [Continue reading]

Michelangelo String Quartet
Music of Haydn, Shostakovich, Beethoven
Library of Congress

SEE ALSO:
Ben Hogwood, Michelangelo String Quartet at Wigmore Hall (Classical Source, February 8, 2010)

---, Michelangelo String Quartet (Classical Source, October 9, 2006)