Word: guarneri
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...extra cello to Mozart's quintet, but the effect in his rambunctious opening movement is more like 60 strings than six. With its robust peasant dances, twining lines of song and sudden hushes and crescendos, Tchaikovsky's tribute to Florence is theatrical and Slavic. The new Guarneri Quartet, joined by half the Budapest Quartet, manages an almost symphonic treatment of the composer's work...
...years. This, however, is not likely to cut much ice with many performers, if only because musicians have a habit of disagreeing on almost every notion concerning their instruments, especially violins. Fiddle players agree on one important fact, however: the finest violins are the Cremona instruments made by Joseph Guarneri del Gesù (1698-1744) and Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737). There are only about 150 Guarneri and 550 Strads still in existence, and they sell today for $30,000 to $100,000. Most violinists cannot afford that kind of money...
Polo Balls. To begin with, even the foremost violinists are out of tune. Jascha Heifetz, Leonid Kogan and Isaac Stern like the dark, virile tone of the Guarneri; Zino Francescatti, Yehudi Menuhin and David Oistrakh prefer the lighter, silvery tone of the Stradivari. The Guarneri has the breadth and projection of a contralto, says one camp. Ah, yes, but the Strad has the clarity and finesse of a soprano, counters the other. That Stradivari enjoys a more illustrious reputation, says Heifetz, is because "he had a better pressagent." Actually, claims Jascha, "the Guarneri is a joyous woman, richly experienced...
Leading up to it were two works, the Mozart Quintet in F Major, K. 168, and the Quartet No. 2 (1958), of Leon Kirchner. Whereas the Beethoven is obviously a tremendous intellectual challenge to performers, the Mozart is deceptively simple. The Guarneri Quartet, fortunately, was not deceived. The pitfall with this, as with many other Mozart works, is that the player or players will not make the most of the symmetry of the music, and will turn out aperformance that is drab and uninteresting. While one may argue that the music is overly simple, one must remember that this...
...Guarneri Quartet fully understood the interpretational problem involved, and played was a great awareness of the piece's total effectiveness. Only the somewhat staccato playing in the third movement could be questioned...