Sometimes the best way to tell a story is to start at the end. That way your destination is clear. That’s what the Calidore String Quartet decided to do when recording all of Beethoven’s String Quartets during the pandemic and recently releasing their first 3-CD set, Beethoven: The Late Quartets.
BBC Music Magazine’s latest issue reviewed the Calidore Quartet’s Late Beethoven release, giving it the highest possible rating of five stars for both performance and recording quality.
“The New York- based Calidore Quartet gives meticulously detailed performances of Beethoven’s late string quartets, with playing of quite remarkable technical accomplishment. I’m note sure, for instance, that I’ve ever heard the tremendously challenging Op. 133 Fugue (the original finale of the Quartet Op. 130) done with greater precision and clarity, and it makes for quite overwhelming experience... The players have clearly thought long and hard about these masterpieces of the string quartet repertoire, and they have produced performances that can stand comparison with the best.”
The pandemic reaffirmed our commitment to live performance by emphasizing that is an exchange of energy that is essential for music making. Furthermore, we continue to hold a profound sense of gratitude to inhabit the sacred space of performance with a live audience.
The Calidore, now based in New York, just released a recording of Beethoven’s late string quartets on Signum Records. The world may not need another set of these monuments to chamber music, but they are boldly recorded here, played with remarkable depth, yet another example of astonishingly life-affirming music making.
It has now developed its own unique sound and personality. Different from other North American quartets, the Calidore String Quartet has a more intimate, less extroverted personality. While all members of the group are highly accomplished, this individual accomplishment is not foregrounded or flaunted. Rather, the emphasis in the playing is on a refined balance among the instruments, on warmth of tone, on gentleness, and unfailing poise.
The essence of the Calidore is just how centered it is. It does not give the impression of risk-taking but risk-absorbing. The quartet’s cellist, Estelle Choi, anchors herself as though she has roots extending under the stage. Her tone is rich, deep and powerful, giving the impression that music and the room are a single living being. She is unflappable but not obvious. When Beethoven erupts, as he does in the Presto movement in the middle Opus 131, her cello mimics the absurdity of unexpected delight, the portents of a godlike laughter beyond our means of understanding.
The justly acclaimed Calidore Quartet returned to the Phillips Collection for the local premiere of Caroline Shaw’s Three Essays, co-commissioned by the Phillips. This three movement meditation on the variety of human communication held the audience rapt. The Essays were framed by a stylish late Haydn quartet and Schumann’s Third Quartet in a loving, emotionally cohesive performance.
That is to say that the Calidores were remarkable for the precision of their expression, their understated but relentless intensity…In short, the Calidores balanced intellect and expression in such a way as to make them a pleasure to hear all afternoon. Keep your ears out for these young musicians.
The second half featured Felix Mendelssohn’s F minor Quartet, written in the composer’s grief for the death of his sister Fanny. The Calidore Quartet put their shoulders into the meaning of the composer’s psychological crisis, with the instruments crying, sobbing or else wandering numbly from key to key as if in shock. This was a powerful performance, with the players putting themselves deep into the psychology of the work.
The justly acclaimed Calidore Quartet returned to the Phillips Collection for the local premiere of Caroline Shaw’s Three Essays, co-commissioned by the Phillips. This three movement meditation on the variety of human communication held the audience rapt. The Essays were framed by a stylish late Haydn quartet and Schumann’s Third Quartet in a loving, emotionally cohesive performance.