Quatuor Ébène

Mozart dedicated a series of six quartets to his friend Haydn. The second sounds balanced and bright: the climax of classical quartet writing. Several years later, Mozart's exuberant frivolity was tempered by Beethoven. It is probably in his Eleventh String Quartet, the 'Quartetto Serioso', that we first hear the passion of Beethoven's mature compositions, in which he was wrestling with the confines of the traditional string quartet. Ravel only once ventured into the string quartet genre. Following Debussy's example, it has the sense of colour, dreaminess and volume of the great impressionist orchestral works. Enjoy the youthful enthusiasm of the French Quatuor Ebène in this encounter between Austrian clarity, German passion and French finesse.