Beethoven/Quatuor Mosaiques - The Late Quartets

The Guardian 80

Playing with gut strings and on early 19th century-design bows, Quatuor Mosaïques bring warmth and subtlety to these fascinating works, but the set doesn’t quite sit alongside the greatest recordings

Even nowadays, when period-instrument ensembles and soloists abound, string quartets who play the classical repertoire not just using gut strings but also with 18th- and early 19th-century design bows are few and far between. But the Quatuor Mosaïques have been doing that for 30 years now. Over that period they have explored and recorded a wide range of the quartet repertoire, from Haydn to Mendelssohn. On disc, at least, they have been much more circumspect about Beethoven. Recordings of the Op 18 works appeared piecemeal a decade and more ago, but it’s only now that they have finally got around to the five late quartets; there’s a set of the middle-period works to follow as well.

The phrasing seems surprisingly ​modern​, but there’s a lightness and poise in many passages