The Zehetmair Quartett recorded two of the three string quartets that Robert Schumann composed in the summer of 1842 and published as his Op. 41: No. 1 in A minor and No. 3 in A major. The disc was named Record of the Year at the 2003 Gramophone Awards and also received the Diapason d'or de l'année. It was the quartet's second album for ECM, after a pairing of Bartók and Hartmann, and it brought the same spontaneous approach to the core nineteenth-century repertoire.
The violinist and conductor Thomas Zehetmair founded the quartet in 1994. Here he plays with Matthias Metzger (violin), Ruth Killius (viola) and Françoise Groben (cello). The four kept their solo careers and met for periods of intensive study and performance, and they played from memory, an unusual practice for a string quartet. The sessions took place at Radio Studio DRS in Zürich in July and August 2001, with Manfred Eicher producing and Stephan Schellmann as engineer.
Schumann dedicated the three quartets to Felix Mendelssohn, whose influence is clearest in the scherzo of the First. That quartet opens with a slow Andante espressivo introduction in A minor, which gives way to the Allegro, and it ends with a driving Presto. The Third begins with another Andante espressivo before an Allegro molto moderato, then moves to an Assai agitato, a long Adagio molto and a closing Allegro molto vivace. Writing in The Independent, Rob Cowan noted how closely the players follow Schumann's markings, reading assai agitato as breathless, uncertain and a little frightened. The quartet varies tone, vibrato and dynamics constantly, and the inner voices are clearly heard.
The Times heard "just the right emotional climate of fluttering, yearning expressivity that the pieces need". In Gramophone, James Jolly wrote that the studio recording has the immediacy of a live occasion and that the performances "crackle with excitement". The disc was also an Editor's Choice in BBC Music Magazine, a Selection in The Strad and a Choc du mois in Le Monde de la Musique.
This is the CD edition of ECM New Series 1793, first released on 10 February 2003.
