Search - Pro Arte Quartet :: Play Debussy Ravel & Faure

Rob Cowan's review in 'The Independent'

Record Collector | Mons, Belgium | 12/18/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

""Born of the Brussels Conservatoire not long before the First World War, the Pro Arte Quartet achieved an impressive 78-rpm discography, with Haydn central but with healthy representation from other areas of the repertoire, the French school especially.



"This CD provides an effective show-case for their habitual poise, rhythmic liveliness, warmth of texture, and refusal to dawdle. The Debussy emerges as unusually transparent, even through the mists (and scratches) of time: few groups have voiced the Andantino with such affecting inwardness, and fewer still are (or were) as successful in animating the outer movements.



"Ravel's F major is notably supple, but for me the disc's major attraction is an unusually perceptive account of Faure's deeply confessional E minor Quartet, a relatively late work but one with an intense expressiveness that sometimes verges on desperation. Here, however, informed restraint makes rich capital of the work's many subtleties, while the relatively 'closed' mono sound ensures an appropriate sense of intimacy."





"