| "This superb ensemble from Cologne simply came on stage and played, immediately radiating a palpable joy in music-making, and projecting a real sense of communication and contact with the audience. Each player has an individual contribution to make, but the sum of the parts is a balance of discipline, confidence, concentration, exquisite ensemble and magnificently assured playing. Schumann´s Quartet in A ... opened the concert in a perfectly judged, spacious and glowing performance. Beethoven´s Op.131 ... is basically played as one continuous movement. The intensity of the opening fugue set the scene for a truly inspirational interpretation. The Auryn´s impeccable tonal blend, perfectly judged tempi and sensitively shaped phrasing produced a performance of truly distinguished musicianship." Frank Carroll, Sunday Herald, 5th September 2004, Edinburgh. Beethoven String Quartets Vol. 3 and 4 "In these concluding installments of their complete Beethoven cycle, the Auryn Quartet... have put forth a breathtakingly new and illuminating proposition. Instead of presenting the music as late Beethoven, riddled with awkward enharmonic changes and thorny technical obstacles , they play them as mainstream classical music of great confidence and power. In so doing, they have rethought numerous commonly accepted interpretive solutions. A few examples will have to suffice. The way the Auryn embrace the composer´s idiosyncratic use of clockwork elements, like the triplets in bar 48 of the first movement of Op.132, transforms notions of what drives the Beethoven machine. And the overwhelming positive attitude with which they play the 'Meno mosso e moderato' in the Grosse Fuge proves that a quartet can master this super-human movement. There are also deeply profound individual touches , as when Matthias Lingenfelder´s tone breaks before the ´Beklemmt` section of the Cavatina in Op.130. Beyond these moments of epiphany, the Auryn possess a sense of latent power that creates a superb kind of musical tension, a rare ability to phrase with a kind of radiant Italianate grace and in hypnotic big pictures arches , and to do so as with one voice. Unlike the Takács.......there is no sense that this is a first violinist and `the others´, or that the music is a series of (occasionally dysfunctional) fragments, however brilliantly... played . At times the Auryn performances seem so close to what one sees unfolding on the printed score that it is possible to believe you are hearing directly what Beethoven had in mind. Perhaps only the Busch Quartet had this kind of liberating vision There is no shortage of great and famous Beethoven cycles, but there are no performances such as these. For me , this is now the set to beat." Laurence Vittes, The Gramophone, April 2005. |
"shared spirituality" The New York Times Just when you get complacent and think you've heard it all before, a new group comes to town and blows you away. ... A lot of todays fine ensembles play as idiomatically and as imaginatively, but few do it as beautyfully. Washington Post "The Auryn plays with an enviable balance of abandon and discipline" American Record Guide "In beauty and confidence of its playing, the Auryn somewhat recalled the now-disbanded Cleveland Quartet" San Antonio Express "One left the Wigmore thinking of nothing but Schubert, for the Auryn Quartet gave a compellingly dramatic and magnificently assured performance." The Times, London "...one of the great hopefuls of the truly not-so-small international quartet scene. The excellent reputation of this Cologne ensemble is based upon perfect intonation, exquisite ensemble, a pleasing and sonorous timbre, and stylistically accurate, intense interpretations." FonoForum Juntos forman una agrupación en la que aparecen reunidas prácticamente todas las virtudes que se requieren para lograr un cuarteto ni más ni menos que óptimo. Desde la cohesión y el ajuste hasta la sonoridad y, la afinación, pasando por il equilibrio impecable, la justeza ritmica sin fallas, el fraseo intelligente y elegante, la precisión matemática de los ataques y la vitalidad que saben imprimir a su labor junto con un interés que en momento algun decae, se erigieron en factores tan marcados como, obviamente, positivos. Y probablemete por encima de todo, una musicalidad real, sentida, vivida, limpida. Por ese camino no se podria haber llegado a un resultado que no fuera superiormente bueno. La Nacion, Buenos Aires Fauré, Piano Quintets ... Orth and the Auryn Quartet's mastery of a notoriously elusive idiom is unfaltering. Sample the opening of the First Quintet where one of Faurés most elegiac themes is launched, as it were, in a sparkling nimbus of light, or the opening of the finale's exqusite archaic dance, developed with such ingenuity and urgency, and you will hear playing of an unfaltering 'line' and sensitivity. ... Gramophone ... le Quatuor dit "Rosamunde". L'interprétatation des Auryn est une véritable leçon de style avec son Allegro non troppo initial au raffinement tout en nuances porté par une legato vocal qui fait merveille dans la confidence doucement mélancolique d'une secrète blessure, son Andante simplement murmuré, son menuet Allegretto sur un tempo de valse lente, sombre et tendre, pleine de détresse, comme à la recherche du temps perdu, son Allegro moderato final où l'horizon s'éclaire, où tout s'allège et où, subtilement, l'esprit de la danse devient élégance et liesse porteuses d'oubli. Voilà une mémorable interprétation du Quatuor Rosamunde. Répertoire des disques compacts, Paris |