Sergeï Rachmaninov / Piotr Ilyitch Tchaïkovski : Quatuors

CD Sergeï Rachmaninov / Piotr Ilyitch Tchaïkovski : Quatuors Quatuor Elysée

"As a pianist, composer and conductor, Rachmaninov, like Ravel, occupies a distinctive place in the history of music. Rachmaninov's musical language is easily recognisable and accords primacy to melody: his music touches us by its heart-rending vulnerability and absolute sincerity. True rarities, the two unfinished string quartets are scores from his youth and totally unknown as works by Rachmaninov and have been very little recorded.
For their induction into the Ligia catalogue, the Quatuor Elysée (Elysée Quartet) has chosen to reintroduce us to these pieces, alongside a work from Tchaikovsky's youth, his first string quartet composed in 1871. The melancholy Andante cantibile movement has become famous – it was apparently based on a folk song the composer heard being whistled by a house painter. It was played at a tribute concert to Leo Tolstoy who said he had been moved to tears by this movement.
Rachmaninov stated that "a composer must possess two essential qualities... imagination and a heightened sense of musical colour." There is no doubt that the Quatuor Elysée demonstrates these very qualities in the performance of such beautiful little-known pieces of Russian chamber music."