Sauguet: Les Trois Quatuors

Stanislas Quartet

There are two ways of looking at the string quartet: one is serious, the other not frivolous but ingenuous. The first proclaims, with Vincent d’Indy, that it ‘must, to have real artistic significance, be a work of maturity’; examples in support of this include Franck’s and Faure’s quartets, and the late Beethoven’s. The second replies with the Ravel quartet, and Mozart’s ‘Milanese’ quartets or, quite simply, Beethoven’s first, which were only meant to be music with no pretense. Sauguet is currently confined to a sort of purgatory, but his chamber music has always been ill-known, in spite of the treasures in his oeuvre. He came back to the quartet genre three times at three different ages- 26, in the blossoming of writing talent, at 47 in a deepened maturity, and at 78, in a dusk when every hour marvels at nocturnal glimmers. Each of these works is included on this release from the French ensemble Quatuor Stanislas.

Price: $22.99