Vermeer Quartet

One of the great recent versions of - arguably - the towering string quartets of the 20th century is by frequent Buffalo visitors the Vermeer Quartet. And because it's on Naxos, this two-disc set is budget priced. Three decades separate the composition of the first Bartok Quartet from the sixth and last. Not only is the stylistic diversity within them often much exaggerated but so too are the difficulties presented by the third quartet, which, for all its dissonance, is so structurally cohesive (it's the shortest at 15 minutes - half the length of the first, fifth and sixth) that it remains one of the most powerful works in the quartet repertoire. What the much-traveled, much-recorded Vermeer Quartet brings to these quartets is irreplaceable, i.e., these four men are never flummoxed for a second by this music. You will never catch them, no matter how fiendishly demanding it gets, substituting sound for music. They never forget that the composer who, in revolutionary youth, pointedly (and theatrically) wore peasant boots, came of musical age as a contemporary of Strauss and Debussy. The result is a discipline and a suavity that elevates their Bartok cycle to a very high level.

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