Engegard Quartet

Engegård Quartet – Johan Kvandal: Complete String Quartets (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:13:52 minutes | 2,55 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Lawo Classics

Johan Kvandal’s string quartets nos. 1–3 have already been recorded, but here we are also introduced to his other works for this classical ensemble. The Engegård Quartet are ideal interpreters of these often challenging works spanning almost four decades of the composer’s life. Thus they show the artistic development of one of the foremost Norwegian composers of the post-war generation.

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Engegård Quartet – Schumann: The String Quartets (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:31 minutes | 1,32 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

Robert Schumann rated the string quartet genre very highly, describing it as ‘noble’ and considering it to be one of the most revealing in terms of compositional craftsmanship. Possibly it was the high regard in which he held the genre that for so long stopped him from actually completing a quartet of his own – although he had first seriously considered writing one in 1828, it took almost 15 years before he was ready to fully commit to the idea. Once he had done so, there was no returning: during some hectic summer weeks in 1842, a year which is often called ‘Schumann’s chamber music year’, he completed the three string quartets of his Op. 41, presenting them to his wife Clara on her 23rd birthday in September. In her diary she wrote ‘… they delighted me to the utmost. Everything in them is new, clear, expertly worked out and always idiomatic.’

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Engegård Quartet – Mozart: String Quartets – Dedicated to Haydn, Vol. 2 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:19:58 minutes | 2,68 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Lawo Classics

With this release, the Engegard Quartet completes its recordings of the six string quartets that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dedicated to his paternal friend Joseph Haydn. Written in Vienna in Mozart’s “mature” years – from age 25 until he died 36 years old in 1791 – they are a gift to a friend that hardly has its equal. He worked on them alongside many other works from 1782 to 1785 and proudly presented them to friends and colleagues, often in his own home. His own son believed he would have become immortal had he written nothing else.

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Engegård Quartet – String Quartets, Vol. IV: Schubert, Ratkje, Britten, Haydn (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/352.8 kHz | Time – 01:37:41 minutes | 4,49 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © 2L, Lindberg Lyd

Perhaps the greatest single characteristic of Franz Schubert’s Rosamunde Quartet (1823) is the elusive, longing and perhaps even tragically unconsummated atmosphere that pervades the entire work. Only in the Andante are we really allowed to relax in its peaceful serenity.
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