Ludwig van Beethoven, Anton Bruckner, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Heinz Holliger, Zehetmair Quartett

The Zehetmair Quartett spreads four quartets across two discs and almost two centuries. Beethoven's last string quartet, the F major Op. 135, opens the first disc and is followed by Anton Bruckner's rarely heard C minor quartet. The second disc pairs Karl Amadeus Hartmann's String Quartet No. 2 with the Second Quartet of Heinz Holliger, written for this ensemble and first performed by it in Cologne in 2008. The set is also a farewell. The Hartmann was the last recording to feature founding cellist Françoise Groben, who died in 2011, and the album is dedicated to her memory.

The Beethoven, Bruckner and Holliger were recorded in April and May 2010 at Radio Studio DRS in Zürich. On those sessions Thomas Zehetmair and Kuba Jakowicz play violin, Ruth Killius viola and Ursula Smith cello. The Hartmann dates from April 2002, with the earlier line-up that included Groben, and had never been released before. Manfred Eicher produced the album. The booklet carries an essay by Wolfgang Sandner and notes by Zehetmair and Killius.

Bruckner wrote his quartet in 1862 as a study piece during his lessons with Otto Kitzler, and Zehetmair hears it as touching and warm-hearted. He calls the Hartmann “a large-scale nostalgic drama, full of wisdom”. Dedicated to the composer's wife Elisabeth, it moves from a slow introduction into a fiercely energetic first movement, then an expressive Andantino and a closing Presto. Holliger's quartet, dedicated to Elliott Carter, runs for 24 minutes as a single track. It passes through five sections, from a furious opening through a figured canon and a flickering perpetuum mobile to the closing Heterophonien.

Reviewing the set for The Strad in January 2014, David Kettle found that the programme “doesn't really hang together as a recital”. He was won over by the Bruckner and wrote that the quartet's approach “pays off magnificently in the Hartmann and the Holliger”. On WDR 3, Christoph Vratz heard the Bruckner as cleansed, direct and fresh, and praised an ensemble that never settles for the middle ground.

Double CD on ECM New Series, catalogue number ECM New Series 2195/96, first released in October 2013, with booklet notes in German and English.