Tchaikovsky:
Album for the Young
Russian Song
Old French Song
Mama
Der kleine Reiter
Marsch der Holzsoldaten
Die kranke Puppe
Begräbnis der Puppe
Die Hexe
Süße Träumerei
Kamarinskaya
String Quartet no.1 op.11

Schnittke:
Canon in memoriam Igor Stravinsky

Stravinsky:
Concertino

An enchanting programme of Russian music for string quartet from the acclaimed Kuss Quartet. The multiple-composer Variations on a Russian folk song has composers such as Scriabin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov and Lyadov rub shoulders with lesser-known names such as Vitols, Blumenfeld, Ewald, Winkler, Sokolov and Artsybuschev – each composer contributing on variation.

Selections from Tchaikovsky’s Album for the Young frame two 20th-century works – Stravinsky’s effervescent Concertino, and Schnittke’s spare and sombre Canon in memoriam Igor Stravinsky.

Tchaikovsky’s ever-popular First String Quartet concludes an ingeniously constructed programme.

The Kuss Quartet’s ONYX debut of Schubert and Berg was praised by reviewers worldwide.

‘The Kuss Quartet hit hard: in each instance the change of key, from piano to fortissimo in two bars, is hurled across with a violence that’s a portent of things to come. This first movement of agitated tremolos and major/minor juxtapositions is tightly coalesced in a performance of ferocity and concentration, and the aggressive outbursts in the slow movement are played to reflect not simply passing anger but menacing rage. The Kuss hold back nothing in their depiction of spine-chilling power in these movements...’ Gramophone

‘I started to persuade myself that it was well worth sacrificing some large-scale tension in the interests of the sheer beauty of what the Kuss gives us here … despite these reservations, I know I shall return to this performance: the best of it is well worth it. Alban Berg’s early String Quartet is an admirable coupling, played with an ardour and an attention to detail that combine to produce a very absorbing performance.’ International Record Review