Felix & Fanny Mendelssohn: String Quartets Takács Quartet

• Fanny Mendelssohn (1805 - 1847): String Quartet in E-Flat Major, H-U 277:
• 1 Mendelssohn: String Quartet in E-Flat Major, H-U 277: I. Adagio ma non troppo 04:38
• 2 Mendelssohn: String Quartet in E-Flat Major, H-U 277: II. Allegretto 03:45
• 3 Mendelssohn: String Quartet in E-Flat Major, H-U 277: III. Romanze 06:04
• 4 Mendelssohn: String Quartet in E-Flat Major, H-U 277: IV. Allegro molto vivace 05:42
• Felix Mendelssohn (1809 - 1847): String Quartet No. 6 in F Minor, Op. 80, MWV R37:
• 5 Mendelssohn: String Quartet No. 6 in F Minor, Op. 80, MWV R37: I. Allegro vivace assai – Presto 07:13
• 6 Mendelssohn: String Quartet No. 6 in F Minor, Op. 80, MWV R37: II. Allegro assai 04:16
• 7 Mendelssohn: String Quartet No. 6 in F Minor, Op. 80, MWV R37: III. Adagio 07:25
• 8 Mendelssohn: String Quartet No. 6 in F Minor, Op. 80, MWV R37: IV. Finale. Allegro molto 05:41
• String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 13, MWV R22:
• 9 Mendelssohn: String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 13, MWV R22: I. Adagio – Allegro vivace 08:13
• 10 Mendelssohn: String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 13, MWV R22: II. Adagio non lento 07:46
• 11 Mendelssohn: String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 13, MWV R22: III. Intermezzo. Allegretto con moto – Allegro di molto 05:06
• 12 Mendelssohn: String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 13, MWV R22: IV. Presto – Adagio non lento 09:21
• Total Runtime 01:15:10

Info for Felix & Fanny Mendelssohn: String Quartets

Felix’s impassioned F minor quartet was the fiercely personal response to his sister’s death in 1847, only a few months before his own. The Takács Quartet frames it with equally committed accounts of a much earlier work, and Fanny’s own important contribution to the genre.

Fanny Hensel (née Mendelssohn, 1805-1847) was the elder sister of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy by some three years, and, like him, a prolific composer and virtuoso pianist. But the combination of her gender and class precluded any viable option for her to pursue a professional career. In the conservative Prussian environment of the 1820s, women were not expected to rival their male counterparts in composition, and as a member of the upper stratum of Berlin society and as a lady of leisure, she was groomed to marry and to play the private role of a Hausfrau, rather than the public role of an internationally acclaimed celebrity such as her brother. (In 1829, she wed the court painter Wilhelm Hensel, and avoided public appearances as a pianist, finding her creative outlet instead in organizing biweekly concerts at the family’s Berlin residence, where she conducted a chorus from her piano so that she could perform choral works by J S Bach and concert versions of Gluck operas, as well as chamber music.) Nevertheless, Fanny Mendelssohn received, like her brother, a most rigorous musical education, which entailed weekly composition lessons with Carl Friedrich Zelter (director of the Berlin Singakademie), an immersion into the cerebral counterpoint of Bach (she composed dozens of now mostly lost fugues, and earned from her brother the Kosename of ‘Thomascantor’), and piano lessons with leading musicians of the time, including Ludwig Berger (a pupil of Muzio Clementi), Johann Nepomuk Hummel (a former wunderkind whom Mozart had taught gratis) and the amiable Bohemian Ignaz Moscheles (a confidant of Beethoven). ...

"The Takács Quartet has sustained an admiring following through its changes of personnel down the years, and their exceptional precision of tuning and ensemble, especially at full-tilt Mendelssohnian pace, remains as impressive as ever" (BBC Music Magazine)

"Their performance of Fanny Mendelssohn's E flat major String Quartet is an eloquent one … this [album] is well worth it for the combination of brother and sister" (BBC Record Review)

"An album of real spirit and vigor … it’s a mix of the thoughtful and the exciting, all bracingly recorded" (The Arts Fuse, USA)

Takács Quartet

Takács Quartet
The world-renowned Takács Quartet is now entering its forty-ninth season. Edward Dusinberre, Harumi Rhodes (violins), Richard O’Neill (viola) and András Fejér (cello) are excited about the 2023-2024 season that features varied projects including a new work written for them. Nokuthula Ngwenyama composed ‘Flow,’ an exploration and celebration of the natural world. The work was commissioned by nine concert presenters throughout the USA. July sees the release of a new recording of works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Dvořák for Hyperion Records, while later in the season the quartet will release works by Schubert including his final quartet in G major. In the Spring of 2024 the ensemble will perform and record piano quintets by Price and Dvořák with long-time chamber music partner Marc-Andre Hamelin.

As Associate Artists at London’s Wigmore Hall the Takács will perform four concerts featuring works by Hough, Price, Janacek, Schubert and Beethoven. During the season the ensemble will play at other prestigious European venues including Berlin, Geneva, Linz, Innsbruck, Cambridge and St. Andrews. The Takács will appear at the Adams Chamber Music Festival in New Zealand. The group’s North American engagements include concerts in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC, Vancouver, Ann Arbor, Phoenix, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Portland, Cleveland, Santa Fe and Stanford. The ensemble will perform two Bartók cycles at San Jose State University and Middlebury College and appear for the first time at the Virginia Arts Festival with pianist Olga Kern.

The members of the Takács Quartet are Christoffersen Fellows and Artists in Residence at the University of Colorado, Boulder. For the 23-24 season the quartet enter into a partnership with El Sistema Colorado, working closely with its chamber music education program in Denver. During the summer months the Takács join the faculty at the Music Academy of the West, running an intensive quartet seminar.

In 2021 the Takács won a Presto Music Recording of the Year Award for their recordings of string quartets by Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, and a Gramophone Award with pianist Garrick Ohlsson for piano quintets by Amy Beach and Elgar. Other releases for Hyperion feature works by Haydn, Schubert, Janáček, Smetana, Debussy and Britten, as well as piano quintets by César Franck and Shostakovich (with Marc-André Hamelin), and viola quintets by Brahms and Dvorák (with Lawrence Power). For their CDs on the Decca/London label, the Quartet has won three Gramophone Awards, a Grammy Award, three Japanese Record Academy Awards, Disc of the Year at the inaugural BBC Music Magazine Awards, and Ensemble Album of the Year at the Classical Brits. Full details of all recordings can be found in the Recordings section of the Quartet's website.

The Takács Quartet is known for its innovative programming. In 2021-22 the ensemble partnered with bandoneon virtuoso Julien Labro to premiere new works by Clarice Assad and Bryce Dessner, commissioned by Music Accord. In 2014 the Takács performed a program inspired by Philip Roth’s novel Everyman with Meryl Streep at Princeton, and again with her at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto in 2015. They first performed Everyman at Carnegie Hall in 2007 with Philip Seymour Hoffman. They have toured 14 cities with the poet Robert Pinsky, and played regularly with the Hungarian Folk group Muzsikas.

In 2014 the Takács became the first string quartet to be awarded the Wigmore Hall Medal. In 2012, Gramophone announced that the Takács was the first string quartet to be inducted into its Hall of Fame. The ensemble also won the 2011 Award for Chamber Music and Song presented by the Royal Philharmonic Society in London.

The Takács Quartet was formed in 1975 at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest by Gabor Takács-Nagy, Károly Schranz, Gabor Ormai and András Fejér, while all four were students. The group received international attention in 1977, winning First Prize and the Critics’ Prize at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France. The Quartet also won the Gold Medal at the 1978 Portsmouth and Bordeaux Competitions and First Prizes at the Budapest International String Quartet Competition in 1978 and the Bratislava Competition in 1981. The Quartet made its North American debut tour in 1982. Members of the Takács Quartet are the grateful beneficiaries of an instrument loan by the Drake Foundation.

Booklet for Felix & Fanny Mendelssohn: String Quartets