This is the second instalment of the Juilliard String Quartet's recording of the Paul Hindemith string quartets, made for the Edition Paul Hindemith. It pairs the Second Quartet in F minor, op. 10, with the Sixth Quartet in E flat. The complete cycle by the Juilliard received the German Record Critics' Award, and this disc also won the critics' quarterly prize.
Hindemith (1895-1963), born in Hanau and died in Frankfurt am Main, was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher and conductor. The players are Robert Mann and Joel Smirnoff (violins), Samuel Rhodes (viola) and Joel Krosnick (cello). Mann had founded the quartet in New York in 1946 and led it until 1999, so this is one of the last recordings of his long tenure. The sessions took place on 14-16 June 1996 at the Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City. Teije van Geest produced them, Hudson Fair engineered and Giselher Schubert supervised the recording.
The Streichquartett Nr. 2 f-Moll, op. 10 is the larger work, three movements lasting almost thirty-one minutes. It opens "Sehr lebhaft, straff im Rhythmus", very lively and taut in rhythm. A ten-minute theme with variations, marked "Gemächlich", stands at its centre, and a fast finale of fifteen minutes closes it. The Streichquartett Nr. 6 in Es dates from 1943 and was first played that November in Washington by the Budapest String Quartet. Its four movements run from a slow, expressive opening and an energetic second movement to a set of variations marked "Ruhig" and a broad, forceful finale.
Rhodes wrote the liner notes, and Eckhard Steiger edited the recording. Rhodes explains what drew the group to this music: "We are challenged by the depth of the musical content, the overflowing vitality, and the sophistication of compositional technique that exist in these works." The pairing sets an early work, still carrying an opus number, beside a quartet of Hindemith's maturity. The cover reproduces Dorfeingang (1928), a painting by Franz Radziwill.
CD, Wergo WER 6607 2, released in 1997 in the Edition Paul Hindemith, total time 55'47".
