Orion String Quartet - Beethoven: Early String Quartets (2009)

Once a generation, there's a string quartet that comes along and plays the cycle of Beethoven's 16 quartets with confident, arresting mastery. The Orion String Quartet of New York, which has had considerable success on both sides of the Atlantic. The group doesn't break new ground with its interpretations, but the sheer elegance and precision of the readings is hard to top. The Orion has played the quartets in reverse chronological order, perhaps because if you had to do without one of the two-disc sets, you'd probably skip the early quartets heard here. But the vigorously virtuosic outer movements, with brothers Daniel Phillips and Todd Phillips trading off on the first violin parts, and in general in the dense violin passagework, seem to unfold like clockwork, and the slow movements have the light simplicity that is sometimes missing in performances of these works. The six quartets of Op. 18 are played in their order of compositions, with the String Quartet No. 3 in D major, Op. 18/3, coming first, and the group's technical facility does not impede it from catching the humorous turns of this spiky little work. The LeFrak Concert Hall at Queens College makes a strong chamber music venue from an engineering standpoint, and in general this release, and the entire Orion set, can be recommended to anyone for basic Beethoven string quartet listening.