Quatuor Diotima celebrates the bicentennial anniversary of Anton Bruckner with a recording of his String Quartet in C minor, Rondo in C minor and Theme with Variations in E flat major, alongside the String Quartet in E flat major from his pupil Friedrich Klose. Bruckner wrote these pieces as composition exercises, yet they adumbrate the originality and power of his later works, as well as pay tribute to the glorious Viennese quartet tradition. Like Bruckner, Klose strongly sympathised with Wagner and the proponents of programme music, and chamber music had not appealed to him very much up until the moment he embarked on his only string quartet composition. Sarcastically, he subtitled it a “tribute paid in four instalments to my stern German schoolmasters”, yet he demonstrates a full mastery of the conventions of musical form, paired with an almost unprecedented wealth of musical ideas. This album, recorded at and in close cooperation with the Brucknerhaus Linz, shall be one of the most original contributions to the Bruckner year 2024, highlighting his achievements in the field of chamber music as well as his compositional legacy.

Quatuor Diotima is one of the most in-demand chamber ensembles in the world today, and has worked in close collaboration with several of the greatest composers of the late twentieth century. Reflected in the mirror of today’s music, the quartet projects a new light onto the masterpieces of the 19th and 20th centuries. The quartet returns to PENTATONE after their acclaimed Metamorphosis Ligeti, released in 2023.

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Bruckner: String Quartet in C minor, WAB111: 1. Allegro moderato
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Bruckner: String Quartet in C minor, WAB111: 2. Andante
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Bruckner: String Quartet in C minor, WAB111: 3. Scherzo. Presto
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Bruckner: String Quartet in C minor, WAB111: 4. Rondo. Schnell
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Bruckner: Rondo in C minor, WAB208
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Bruckner: Theme and Variations in E flat major, WAB210
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Klose: String Quartet in E flat major: 1. Moderato
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Klose: String Quartet in E flat major: 2. Adagio ma non troppo
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Klose: String Quartet in E flat major: 3. Vivace
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Klose: String Quartet in E flat major: 4. Moderato

Europadisc Review

The music of Anton Bruckner stands not just as one of the great pillars of late Austro-German Romanticism, but as a tribute to the benefits of ‘lifelong learning’. Born into a schoolmaster’s family, he in turn became a revered teacher in the city of Vienna. But even as he was starting to bear compositional fruit with his sacred music, he began a six-year course of studies with the renowned theorist Simon Sechter (1788–1867). From 1861 – by now in his late 30s – he then undertook further studies with Otto Kitzler, who introduced him to the very different forms and processes of purely instrumental music.

Unlike Bruckner’s symphonic and choral music, Bruckner’s chamber works occupy a tiny and almost entirely neglected corner of his output, the exception being the magnificent Adagio from his 1879 String Quintet in F major. His earlier efforts in the genre, however, belong to his period of study with Kitzler, and they form the starting point for a new album from the Diotima Quartet on the Pentatone label which constitutes one of the more enterprising contributions to this anniversary year.

The disc opens with Bruckner’s String Quartet in C minor of July 1862, a work of classical dimensions and orthodox form which nevertheless shows evidence of the composer’s predilection for contrapuntal invention and, in the first movement’s development section, bold harmonic modulations. It’s to the Diotimas’ credit that, while presenting the music with such poise and faultless intonation, they don’t try to make more of this music than its fairly modest pretensions (though there are hints that it may have been prompted by a request from the violinist Joseph Hellmesberger, there’s no evidence that Bruckner intended it for public performance). The Andante slow movement highlights Bruckner’s indebtedness to the lyricism and harmonic language of Schubert, although the occasional chromaticism and irregular phrase lengths of its outer sections again point tentatively towards the mature Bruckner.

The third movement Scherzo, however – complete with offbeat accents and a Ländler-like Trio – might have come from the pen of Haydn. It’s superbly crafted and, while hardly innovative, would make for a teasing encore piece. The sonata-rondo finale reverts to later classical models, its initially stern tone giving way to a fast-paced alternation of ideas with moments of cantabile reflectiveness, and a brief but effective coda. Just days after completing the Quartet, Bruckner composed an alternative finale, entitled ‘Rondo in larger form’, and the Diotima Quartet include this more expanded movement here. Both the Rondo theme itself and the intervening episodes seem to have benefitted from a few days of reflection, and this makes it an assured standalone work.

Both the String Quartet and the extra Rondo are contained in Bruckner’s so-called Kitzler Study-Book, as is the slightly earlier Theme and Variations in E flat major – the composer’s only other substantial work for quartet. Like those works, it contains very little by way of performance markings (the fourth variation is marked ‘Ada[gi]o’), but the skittish demisemiquavers for second violin in the second variation (of six) and the syncopations of the third give the work a pleasing variety, as do details of scoring in the final two variations. The Diotima Quartet – more familiar to most listeners in 20th-century repertoire – make very persuasive advocates.

While it’s interesting to hear Bruckner in the guise of ‘mature student’, what really gives this disc added appeal is the E flat major Quartet by one of his more neglected pupils. Friedrich Klose was born in Karlsruhe in November 1862, just a few months after Bruckner had completed his C minor Quartet. He initially studied with Vincenz Lachner and then Felix Mottl, and it was the latter who recommended he ‘start again from the beginning’ with Bruckner, with whom he studied from 1886 to 1889 when the latter was at the height of his powers. In Klose’s own words, Bruckner’s aim was ‘simply to lay a solid foundation for independent creation, not to stifle artistic conviction’. Judging by the evidence of this Quartet, composed between 1908 and 1911 (by which time Klose had himself become a composition teacher at Munich’s Academy of Music), Bruckner succeeded splendidly.

There’s little in Jan David Schmitz’s otherwise excellent booklet notes to prepare you for a work which, though conventional in form, captures the restlessness and anxieties of the first decades of the new century. Harmonies and textures frequently seem on the verge of breaking through the bounds of orthodoxy, and there’s much here that recalls the late-Romanticism of early Schoenberg. The Adagio bears the clearest Brucknerian imprint with its two imposing themes, but even here the febrile intensity of the harmonic language and general feeling of restlessness take us several steps further towards modernism than the Master of St Florian did. Restlessness of a different kind – offbeat accents, quick alternation between bowed and pizzicato passages, and a demonic mood – characterises the Scherzo which, like the finale, is based on a motif from the Adagio. The finale’s opening octaves are another Brucknerian element, but again inhabit quite a different world.

The Klose Quartet is a real find (this is its only recording currently on disc), and the Diotimas are ideal champions, inhabiting the world where Romanticism and modernism entwined with consummate skill and eloquence. It’s quite a journey from Bruckner’s apprenticeship to the maturity of his gifted student, but somehow the performers make it all cohere, helped by a well-focussed and vivid recording from the Mittlerer Saal of Linz’s Brucknerhaus. If you’re looking for an alternative to the seemingly endless stream of symphony recordings this bicentenary year, this disc can be enthusiastically recommended!

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New	Brand new item, only ever sourced from the official UK distributor. Usually seal-wrapped, although a minority of labels do not use seal-wrap.
Used - Mint	Used item in excellent condition. Not usually seal-wrapped.
Used - Good	Used item with some minor signs of wear and tear. Never seal-wrapped.
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Condition	Description
New	Brand new item, only ever sourced from the official UK distributor. Usually seal-wrapped, although a minority of labels do not use seal-wrap.
Used - Mint	Used item in excellent condition. Not usually seal-wrapped.
Used - Good	Used item with some minor signs of wear and tear. Never seal-wrapped.
Used - Acceptable	Used item with obvious scuffs or cosmetic damage to the case or booklet. Never seal-wrapped.

Bruckner & Klose - String Quartets

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Europadisc Review

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