Escher String Quartet - Mendelssohn:Quartets 2 3

In 1827, when writing his Quartet in A minor, Op.13, the eighteen-year-old Mendelssohn was especially interested in Beethoven's late quartets - at a time when these works were generally written off as 'confused fantasies of a deaf musician'. The composer uses material from his own song, Frage, describing the result in a letter to a friend: 'You will hear it - with its own notes - in the first and last movements, and in all four movements you will hear its emotions expressed'. Ten years after the Op. 13 quartet, Mendelssohn composed the three quartets that make up his Op. 44. Besides the seven complete quartets, Mendelssohn also wrote four individual movements for string quartet. These were gathered together and published posthumously, and on this second volume of their complete Mendelssohn cycle the Escher Quartet perform two of these pieces, both conceived only a couple of months before the composer's death. The first volume in the Eschers' series, released in April 2015, has been warmly received by the critics, being described as 'a noteworthy addition to the Mendelssohn discography' (Pizzicato).