1971年にポール・ロバートソンにより創設され、約40年に渡り英国を代表するアンサンブルの一つとして活動してきたメディチ弦楽四重奏団。1980年代には、ベートーヴェンの弦楽作品全集や、ヤナーチェク、フォーレの作品をNimbusに残しています。本盤では、同じく英国を代表する弦楽四重奏団の一つである、アルバーニ弦楽四重奏団との共演による1980年代の録音が蘇ります。
東京エムプラス

発売・販売元 提供資料 （2019/09/30）

These are Shostakovich recordings from 1986 and 1988; several factors seem to have led to their excavation and revival. One is the fact that the Medici Quartet was a favorite group among chamber music lovers until their career was cut short by the illness of one of their members. This album shows what they can do; they bring the heated, passionate quality to Shostakovich that is often thought to be the province exclusively of Russian groups. Furthermore, the program includes some illuminating pieces of early Shostakovich to go with the repertory works, the Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57, and the String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110. The entire program holds together exceptionally well, finding traces of the mature Shostakovich even in the early Octet Pieces and Elegy and Polka, productions of the composers teen years. Probably the high point is the Piano Quintet, which was composed in 1940, but the dark, tragic (until the finale) reading of the Medici Quartet and pianist John Bingham clearly seems to adumbrate the postwar Shostakovich. Sample the Beethovenian fugue. The early CD audio, rarely really satisfying, is degraded further here by a harsh church acoustic, but the album easily passes the test for reissue relevance.

Rovi