Glière String Quartet - CD Review, 13^th of March 2023

Reinhold Glière - Theme with variations from Quartet No. 1 op. 2 in A major and Quartet No. 2 op. 20 in G minor.

I propose you a record released on the 6^th of January 2022 on the Polish label DUX Records, featuring the Quartets No. 1 op. 2 in A major and No. 2 op. 20 in G minor of Reinhold Glière, a composer born in Kiev in 1875, who studied in his native city as well as in Moscow and Berlin. He worked as a brilliant teacher at the Conservatory in his hometown and at the Gnesin School of Music in Moscow, where he had Nikolai Miaskovsky and Sergei Prokofiev as students. He composed concertos, orchestral and vocal pieces, scene music and chamber scores, which combined Slavic music themes with romantic stylistic elements - cantabile melodies, rich harmonies, traditional forms and colorful instrumental textures.

The record was recorded by the String Quartet named after composer Reinhold Glière, an ensemble that includes violinists Wladislaw Winokurow and Dominika Falger, violist Martin Edelmann and cellist Andre Stankowsky. It is an ensemble with a wide concert activity in Europe, founded in 2017 in Vienna and composed of talented musicians, passionate about chamber music, instrumentalists who come from different countries - Poland, Austria, Hungary, Germany and Ukraine. Reinhold Gliere's compositions have an important place in the repertoire of this quartet - a vast repertoire ranging from the classical to the contemporary period.