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Shostakovich: The String Quartets
from: DG
Our Price: $39.98 Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0028947574071
Format: Box set
Label: DG
Manufacturer: DG
MPN: 000638802
Number Of Discs: 5
Publisher: DG
Release Date: May 16, 2006
Studio: DG
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Different...Maybe you'll like this approach, maybe you won't
It's hard to assign stars to this set because it's just a different approach from the three other sets I own (Borodin, Fitzwilliam, Brodsky]. Whereas the others tend to emphasize the dramatic, soulful, and sarcastic elements of the Shostakovich, the Emerson Quartet, to some extent, downplays these while moving through the music at a noticeably brisker tempo.
The result is that some features of the music are newly revealed and others are obscured. The biggest difference is in tempo ... Read More
Rating:  - American-Style Borscht...with a Dash of Hot Sauce
Dmitri Shostakovich, my favorite 20th century composer, wrote a series of fifteen string quartets that span his entire career. These are alternately searing, violent, brooding, fiery, introspective works that run the gamut of human emotion and experience -- hardly beautiful, and often quite depressing. But man, do they pack a wallop! They're often considered the greatest creations in the string quartet genre since Beethoven, and it's easy to see why.
These were recorded in live performance ... Read More
Rating: - Cruel Joke
I heard this set of discs elsewhere. I tried to send them to my niece twice as a Christmas present in Paris, France. The delivery by U.P.S. was never accomplished owing to U.P.S. retuning the items to your warehouse too rapidly for my niece to arrainge delivery. I was nonetheless charged for one of these deliveries and just don't want to exhaust the energy to contest this charge, having tried that already. Be very sure that amazon won't spring back to life for my pocketbook.
Rating: - The first--and still greatest?--modernist readings
This re-issue at bargain price of the Emerson's complete Shostakovich quartet cycle is a reminder that their breakthrough readings are roughly a decade old now (the set was taped in concert from Aspen 1994-99). Instead of Russian soul we get clean, often faster interpretations that brought out Shostakovich's modernist side, aided by the ultra virtuosity of the playing. In the meantime, however, other groups like the St. Lawrence and Hagen Quartets have made even more severe, biting, stark, haunted, and tragic ... Read More
Rating: - Great music, great performance
I've been through this collection three times so far and am delighted with it in every aspect. True, I haven't picked up the scores yet, which would add a great deal, but even short of that I can recommend this performance both from an acoustic and aesthetic point of view. And the music, of course, speaks for itself. Big bonus which shouldn't be is that the discs are pressed (burned?) in numerical order 1 through 15 so you don't have to keep switching discs like you do with, say, the Alban Berg Beethoven integral. ... Read More
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