Search - Mendelssohn, Juilliard String Quartet :: String Quartets

Founded in 1947, the Juilliard is the oldest American string quartet but has undergone several personnel changes. The present constellation was formed in 1997; this is its debut recording. It is superb. Tonal homogeneity was never the group's first priority, but the players have already achieved an extraordinary degree of technical, musical, stylistic, and expressive integration. Their intonation, balance, and pacing are impeccable; their rhythmic flexibility, dynamics, mood, and tempo changes unanimous. Joel Smirnoff, formerly second, now first violinist, has a brilliant technique and an exceptionally beautiful, warm, sweet, intense, variable tone, just right for the ardor, passion, exuberance, and inward serenity of these mercurial works, written when Mendelssohn was not yet 20 but displaying incredible compositional skill and emotional maturity. Op. 13, written first, pays homage to Beethoven with virtual quotes from the quartets Op. 95 and 132. Both are vintage Mendelssohn with their beguiling, songful melodies that recur through all the movements; their partly wistful, partly scintillating intermezzos; and their poetic, rapturous romanticism. --Edith Eisler