Quatuor Van Kuijk - Mendelssohn: Complete String Quartets, Vol. 2

After a first volume praised by the press, including an Editor's Choice in Gramophone, the Quatuor Van Kuijk concludes its complete recording of Mendelssohn's string quartets with op.44 nos. 2 and 3 and the Quartet op.80, which bears the mark of the sudden death in 1847 of his sister Fanny, to whom he was very close, at the age of only forty-two. As St�phane Goldet writes in the booklet: 'The act of resistance that is the Quartet op.80, written in a single burst during the summer of 1847, its overwhelming �No, not that, not her!� shouted by four instruments for twenty-five minutes, was to be the composer's last completed work. The four movements of this �confrontation with grief� (Bernard Fournier) in F minor are to be played con dolore, although that marking never appears in the score.' She goes on to quote Brigitte Fran�ois-Sappey: 'This �Requiem for Fanny� might be called �Death and the Young Woman�. As in Schubert's last two quartets, the strings shiver in tremolos over ostinato pedals, like death knells.'