GRECHANINOV: String Quartets Nos. 2 and 4

The career of Alexander Grechaninov (1864-1956), like Rachmaninov’s, bridged the Tsarist and Soviet eras. He, too, emigrated to America and wrote in a style that barely acknowledged musical advances in Europe and elsewhere. Yet these quartets reveal a fecund creative mind, with music suffused with Russian melodic patterns, even if the Fourth Quartet (1929) moves very little further along the road of musical history from his already assured Second (1913). These performances have plenty of personality and the sound is excellent.

-- Matthew Rye, BBC Music Magazine