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| Bela Bartok: The 6 String Quartets - Takacs Quartet | 
 enlarge | Artists: Edward Dusinberre, Andras Fejer, Karoly Schranz, Roger Tapping, Takacs Quartet
Creator: Bela Bartok
Label: Decca
Category: Music
List Price: $33.98
Buy New: $20.99
You Save: $12.99 (38%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $19.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  (14 reviews)
Sales Rank: 17805
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 1
MPN: 455297
UPC: 028945529721
EAN: 0028945529721
ASIN: B0000042GU
Release Date: January 13, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Tracks:
Disc 1
| • | String Quartet No. 1, op. 7 (Sz 40): I. Lento | | • | String Quartet No. 1, op. 7 (Sz 40): II. Poco a poco accelerando all'allegretto | | • | String Quartet No. 1, op. 7 (Sz 40): III. Introduzione Allegro - Allegro vivace | | • | String Quartet No. 3(Sz 85): I. Prima parte: Moderato | | • | String Quartet No. 3(Sz 85): II. Seconda Parte: Allegro | | • | String Quartet No. 3(Sz 85): III. Ricapitulazione della prima parte: Moderato - Coda: Allegro molto | | • | String Quartet No. 5 (Sz 85): I. Allegro | | • | String Quartet No. 5 (Sz 85): II. Adagio molto | | • | String Quartet No. 5 (Sz 85): III. Scherzo. Alla bulgarese -- Trio | | • | String Quartet No. 5 (Sz 85): IV. Andante | | • | String Quartet No. 5 (Sz 85): V. Finale: Allegro vivace -- Presto |
Disc 2
| • | String Quartet No. 2, op. 17 (Sz 67): I. Moderato | | • | String Quartet No. 2, op. 17 (Sz 67): II. Allegro molto capriccioso | | • | String Quartet No. 2, op. 17 (Sz 67): III. Lento | | • | String Quartet No. 4, (Sz 91): I. Allegro | | • | String Quartet No. 4, (Sz 91): II. Prestissimo, con sordino | | • | String Quartet No. 4, (Sz 91): III. Non troppo lento | | • | String Quartet No. 4, (Sz 91): IV. Allegretto pizzicato | | • | String Quartet No. 4, (Sz 91): V. Allegro molto | | • | String Quartet No. 6 (Sz 114): I. Mesto - Piu mosso, pesante - Vivace | | • | String Quartet No. 6 (Sz 114): II. Mesto - Marcia | | • | String Quartet No. 6 (Sz 114): III. Mesto - Burletta: Moderato | | • | IV. Mesto |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com's Best of 1998
If chamber music suggests merely sedate and timid pleasures, let the Takacs Quartet guide you through the profound experience that this medium can convey--above all in the hands of a composer as rich in imagination and innovative in temperament as Bela Bartok. In some ways his cycle of string quartets traces not only his personal creative evolution but the deeply tragic zeitgeist of half a century as well. The Takacs Quartet plays with an unfaltering sense for the lifeblood of this music in performances that are both gutsy and ethereal. --Thomas May
Amazon.com essential recording
Bela Bartok has emerged as one of the few modern masters who continue to be regularly performed and recorded. The six string quartets that span his career from 1908 to 1939 are generally regarded as this century's unsurpassed addition to the medium, and they provide an intimate entree into the world of their withdrawn and enigmatic composer. With this cycle, the Takacs Quartet confirms its reputation, against some very fierce competition, as possibly the most cogent, exciting exponent of this music today. They achieve an unusually successful synthesis of the quartets' polarizing components: lyrically haunting "night music," passages of grotesquely ironic humor, and, in the Sixth Quartet, an unrelentingly pervasive sense of desolation and farewell. In the process, the Takacs players give visceral life to the extremities of technique Bartok's scores demand. These range from exaggerated glissandi to pizzicati made to snap violently against the fingerboard, at times producing a sound more akin to a percussion battery than a string quartet. The ensemble convincingly traverses Bartok's creative evolution, from the hothouse romanticism of the First Quartet to the Third's densely packed modernist fury and the palindrome structures of the Fourth and Fifth Quartets. Richly nuanced with local color, these accounts are among the best available on disc and will likely become standard-setters. --Thomas May
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 angularity, precision, angst October 20, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
One popular dictionary of classical music refers to Bela Bartok's 'driving, anxious rhythms, angular melodies, brackingly sharp dissonances, and folklike modal harmonies'. All of which to say, Bartok does not make for easy listening.
If one must or chooses to fall into the hands of Bartok's six string quartets, he may do no better than to surrender himself to a very long drive and the expertise of the Hungary-rooted Takacs Quartet. After hearing the Takasc perform in Indianapolis--their vigor in performance means that one is left as much with a *visual* as an aural impression--I invested in this acclaimed presentation of the full cycle of Bartok string quartets.
Something was perturbing the European soul in the first quarter of the 20th century. History suggests a number of motors of this angst, bloodstained and otherwise. There in Budapest, Bartok was working it out in music.
One is struck by the torment of soul that comes through in the early Bartok, a tumultuous note that is sounded with striking clarity and discipline by the Takacs. Bartok would eventually emigrate to America and mellow out a bit, but not hint of such sweetening is apparent here. He is interpreted here with precision.
Upon moving on to the Beethoven cycle played by the same quartet, one breathes more deeply, relaxes, indeed even marinates in that earlier master. Not here. Not now.
If your destiny is to know the worried, worrisome Bartok, start here. You may end here as well.
go for Tokyo August 28, 2006
0 out of 19 found this review helpful
Bartok is not a likely candidate for frequent recordings in the 21st century. Before it is too late you should acquire the Tokyo version on RCA (including the Janacek quartets). Besides being a bargain (2 composers for the price of 1), you get passionate playing and sound that is excellent. Do not be swayed by anyone who says Decca (inventor of the "tree" after all) knows how to record anything. It does depend on your speakers (headphones). I have owned systems on which the Tokyo String Quartet did not sound good. Well, this is about the Takacs. They are relatively bloodless (do any of you really hear passion in this recording?). There are many who would say that that's the way Bartok should sound. But the Tokyo is like Heffler and Mikrokosmos--he sounds much better than Ranki whether or not he's authentic.
 Spectacular January 31, 2006
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I bought this CD in preparation for the Takacs Quartet's performance of the Bartok cycle in January of 2005. This recording is absolutely amazing, and it brings out the liveliness and the joy that the members of the Quartet take in playing this piece. Now, make sure you get the chance to see this group live; you will be amazed and astounded by their cohesiveness and energy.
 Lacklustre insight ... airbrushed production. November 1, 2005
7 out of 37 found this review helpful
A medium to large hall ambience smooths & smudges it all. An inappropriate production decision for these quartets.
The playing lacks the emotional concentration & forensic insight needed - they have their moments but overall it just doesn't involve you like it should. The overall effect is of an airbrushed quality - the result is lacklustre.
I grew up on the landmark 1960's Juilliard readings, so you may know where I'm coming from, and what I expect to hear. It so happens that is what works best for this music, which is why those are legendary performance recordings.
After that these fall very far short. As Sony are still not re-releasing those classics, buy the Emerson Qt. recordings instead - they are of a similar quality to - and in the spirit of - the Juilliard's reading.
The third way. October 4, 2005
17 out of 19 found this review helpful
I've recently bought this cycle, after having or listening those by Tokyo String Quartet (DG & RCA), Hagen Quartett (DG), Alban Berg Quartett (EMI), Vegh Qt (Auvidis) and some other versions played by outstanding quartets, like the glorius Arditti Quartet's recording of the Fourth Quartet in Grammavision label.
If I'm thinking about a third way is because Takacs shows a middle interpretation between the very hungarian performings of the Vegh Qt and the very "international" or "western" playing of the Tokyo Qt, ABQ or Hagen Qt versions. The Takacs Quartet that play in this CD box is formed by musicians from the western tradition and hungarian born players, 50%; something you can feel in their interpretation, which is a bit more objective than Takacs' first recording released by Hungaroton, with more hungarian players in the quartet, but still with the taste of the hungarian Bartok tradition, much more close to the popular and folk reminiscences of his music.
I don't hear in this performings the amazing precision of the Tokyo String Quartet in every pizzicatti, glissandi, or technical resource of the works; but, on the other hand, I can say that the musicality and folk sense of some parts it's better done in this Decca recording, which looks much more to the origin of some chords in the folk hungarian music which Bartok so deep has studied. Takacs (Decca) bring a more aggressive version, something that makes very complex to have the precision of the more refine and "distant" Tokyo performings. Anyway, technically it's marvellous too, and that's the reason why I give them 4 stars... 5 stars only in heaven...
The conclusion is we are listening a very good performances of the cycle, in style and technique, one of the key works in this genre along the XXth Century; probably between the better.
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