Search - Quatuor Diotima :: Onslow: String Quartets Op 54 55 & 56

Extraordinarily Fine Early Romantic Quartets Played by a Ter

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 04/22/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Wowee wow!! I had little expectation for this CD. I'd never heard of Quatuor Diotima and had previously heard enough music by George Onslow to believe that it was Schubert-and-water. But the music on this disc is marvelous and it is played with élan and superb musicianship by Quatuor Diotima.



Onslow was a Frenchman born of an English father and a French mother. He grew up in Clermont-Ferrand and schooled there, in Paris and in London. His most notable teacher was Anton Reicha. He was extremely prolific: he wrote three dozen string quartets and these come towards the end of that string, being Nos. 28, 29 and 30. The quartets on this CD can certainly stand beside those of Schubert which they resemble. They were written in 1830 not long after Schubert's and Beethoven's deaths. Both those composers, by the way, praised his music. They are definitely worth hearing. From the remarkable slow introduction of No. 28 to the virtuosic opening Allegro of No. 29 with its dizzying chromatic modulations to the dynamic sonata-allegro finale of No. 30, these are continually engaging and rewarding works.



As for the Quatuor Diotima, they are four young French musicians -- Yun-Peng Zhao & Naaman Sluchin, violins; Franck Chevalier, viola, & Pierre Mortet, cello -- who are clearly destined for stardom in the quartet world. Their playing is marked by precisely judged dynamics, crisp articulation, subtle phrasing, deep musicianship and consistent élan. They have in their short existence -- they were founded in the late 1990s -- received rave reviews and indeed I see by a search of the Internet that this disc has been awarded the 'diapason d'or'. They have up to now mostly been known for their playing of contemporary music, having won an earlier diapason d'or for a disc with music of Lachnemann and Nono. Their name, by the way, comes from Nono's 'Fragmente Stille, an Diotima'. (Diotima was an ancient Greek female philosopher and tutor of Socrates.)



Hearty recommendation.



Scott Morrison"