WOLDEMAR BARGIEL (1828-1897): Complete String Quartets - No. 1 in E, No. 2 in D Minor, No. 3 in A Minor, Op. 15b and No. 4, in D Minor Op. 47, String Octet in C Minor, Op. 15a.

Description: This will mainly be for collectors of early Romanticism since everything but the fourth quartet dates from 1848 and 1850 where Bargiel’s youthful enthusiasm is still under the shadows of Mendelssohn and Schumann. He was concise, though: the three early quartets are beetween 17 and 22 minutes in length but the octet is on a much larger scale (34 minutes in only three movements). Brahms comes up in the fourth quartet of 1888 but not in the way you might first think: there are notable similarities in the first movement of that master’s clarinet quintet to that of Bargiel’s earlier quartet, something Bargiel noted at the time. Otherwise, Bargiel separates himself from many contemporaries by using a sort of metamorphosis, or continuous development, technique in working his thematic material. 2 CDs. Orpheus Quartet w/Yume Sato, Amane Horie (violins), Julia Rebekka Adler (viola), Eva Freitag (cello).