Artis Quartett Wien . Sharon Kam

Mozart himself refuted the myth that he set his works down on paper with a flick of the wrist. He called his six 'Haydn-quartets' 'the fruit of a long and laborious' work process. The Artis Quartet have selected the first of them. Egon Wellesz (1885-1974) was perhaps the most successful composer in Austria during the thirties. His career was in full bloom until it was brutally interrupted by the terror of the Nazi regime. Despite being a student of Schoenberg, Wellesz never renounced his principles on tonality. In its place he searched for a fruitful exchange of old and new. The Artis Quartet have worked on a complete recording of the quartets of this 'entartete' composer and in deSingel we get a little taste of this. After his string quintet opus 111, Brahms announced that he would put an end to his composing. However, when he met the clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld from Meiningen, it resulted in the composition of four dazzling chamber works for clarinet. The premiere of the clarinet quintet in Berlin in 1891 was one of Brahms' greatest successes. It was especially the extremely beautiful Adagio for which the public's appetite seemed unquenchable.