String Quartets Opp 59/2 & 18/4

With their debut release on Virgin Classics in 2005 of Beethoven’s Quartets Opp.59/1 & 95, the Artemis Quartet launched, with promising success, a full Beethoven Quartet cycle for the label. The recording was greeted with great enthusiasm worldwide (in France, CHOC of the Year, Monde de la Musique - Diapason d’Or). This release of Beethoven’s ‘Razumovsky’ & Quartet 18/4 is the Artemis’ much awaited second step in the projected complete Beethoven cycle - this time in its new grouping with new members Gregor Sigl and Friedemann Weigle, who we discover for the first time in an all-quartet programme, further to their recent release of Schubert’s String Quintet with Truls Mørk. The Artemis Quartet has a busy international concert schedule, which takes them to major venues world-wide, where they often perform Beethoven’s String Quartets, of which the Razumovsky and Op. 18 No. 4. Their full schedule can be found in VC-EMIC’s international concert schedule. In 2010 and 2011 their concert programmes will be only Beethoven.