Beethoven Complete String Quartets, Vol. 3: The Late Quartets

Given the modest size of the audience for chamber music in the U.S., the country has produced a remarkable number of world-class string quartets dating back to the 1960s. Now comes the , which formed at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute in 2008 and has gained wide acclaim for a cycle of quartets that concludes with this . It covers the late quartets, plus the , originally attached to the , but later published by as an independent work. The is a technically perilous piece with a contrapuntal energy that seems to overflow the boundaries of the decorous string quartet medium, and it makes a good place to begin appreciating the virtues of the 's performances. The performance is precise, with no sign of strain. In general, precision is a major attraction here, with perfect intonation and a wealth of small detail, but precision doesn't foreclose a certain lightness that is particularly appropriate in the late quartets, built as they often are from seemingly artless tunes. The never overdoes the slow movements, letting a piece like the Lydian-mode "Prayer of a Recovered Person to the Godhead" in the , speak for itself rather than freighting it with retrospective notions of transcendence. Of the existing cycles, this one perhaps follows most closely to that of the , but it has a flavor of its own. The label provides unfussy engineering from an auditorium at Goshen College in Indiana. ~ James Manheim