Ravel, Dutilleux & Hough: String Quartets Takács Quartet

• Stephen Hough (b. 1961): String Quartet No. 1 "Les Six rencontres":
• 1Hough: String Quartet No. 1 "Les Six rencontres": I. Au boulevard03:05
• 2Hough: String Quartet No. 1 "Les Six rencontres": II. Au parc03:25
• 3Hough: String Quartet No. 1 "Les Six rencontres": III. À l'hôtel03:47
• 4Hough: String Quartet No. 1 "Les Six rencontres": IV. Au théâtre04:39
• 5Hough: String Quartet No. 1 "Les Six rencontres": V. À l'église02:55
• 6Hough: String Quartet No. 1 "Les Six rencontres": VI. Au marché04:08
• Henri Dutilleux (1916 - 2013): Ainsi la nuit:
• 7Dutilleux: Ainsi la nuit: I. Libre et souple – Nocturne03:26
• 8Dutilleux: Ainsi la nuit: II. Parenthèse I – Miroir d'espace02:11
• 9Dutilleux: Ainsi la nuit: III. Parenthèse II – Litanies02:53
• 10Dutilleux: Ainsi la nuit: IV. Parenthèse III – Litanies II03:56
• 11Dutilleux: Ainsi la nuit: V. Parenthèse IV – Constellations – Nocturne II03:12
• 12Dutilleux: Ainsi la nuit: VI. Temps suspendu02:30
• Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937): String Quartet in F Major, M. 35:
• 13Ravel: String Quartet in F Major, M. 35: I. Allegro moderato, très doux07:57
• 14Ravel: String Quartet in F Major, M. 35: II. Assez vif, très rythmé06:10
• 15Ravel: String Quartet in F Major, M. 35: III. Très lent08:00
• 16Ravel: String Quartet in F Major, M. 35: IV. Vif et agité05:26
• Total Runtime01:07:40

Info for Ravel, Dutilleux & Hough: String Quartets

If this premiere recording of Stephen Hough’s String Quartet No 1 may be regarded as definitive—the work is dedicated to the Takács Quartet—those of the quartets by Ravel and Dutilleux are no less distinguished.

Dedicated ‘à mon cher maître Gabriel Fauré’, Maurice Ravel’s only string quartet was started in 1902. On 30 April that year he had attended the first performance of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and immediately afterwards set about preparing for the Prix de Rome—a prize he was fated never to win despite repeated attempts between 1900 and 1905. In the autumn he undertook a project for a fellow composer, Frederick Delius, who asked him to make a piano–vocal score of the opera Margot la Rouge. He then got to work on the String Quartet, and the first two movements were finished in December 1902, according to Ravel’s note on the last page of the second movement in the autograph score. The next month, he submitted the first movement for a composition prize at the Paris Conservatoire, where he was still studying with Fauré. The jury was unimpressed and the music drew a typically acidic reaction from the Conservatoire’s director Théodore Dubois, who proclaimed that it lacked simplicity. Even Ravel’s teacher Fauré had initial doubts about the work, though his willingness to give it another chance was a gesture that greatly touched the young Ravel and probably led to the quartet being dedicated to him. The failure of the first movement to win a prize meant that his studies at the Conservatoire were over, and he didn’t return there until several years later—as an examiner.

But Ravel persisted with the String Quartet, and, as the poet Léon-Paul Fargue recalled, he played parts of it on the piano to his friends in Les Apaches, a group of writers, artists and musicians who provided Ravel’s closest artistic circle at the time. By April 1903 he had finished all four movements, then put the work aside for a few months for yet another doomed attempt at the Prix de Rome. During the rest of 1903 it’s likely that he made further revisions to the score. At the time, Ravel was living with his family at 19 boulevard Pereire, in north-west Paris. The pianist and composer Alfredo Casella was living a couple of doors away (at 15 boulevard Pereire), and the two became friends. In his memoirs, Casella recalled finding Ravel on a bench one day, reading through a manuscript. On asking what it was, Ravel told him that it was his new quartet, and that he was rather pleased with it. ...

Takács Quartet

Takács Quartet
The world-renowned Takács Quartet is now entering its forty-ninth season. Edward Dusinberre, Harumi Rhodes (violins), Richard O’Neill (viola) and András Fejér (cello) are excited about the 2023-2024 season that features varied projects including a new work written for them. Nokuthula Ngwenyama composed ‘Flow,’ an exploration and celebration of the natural world. The work was commissioned by nine concert presenters throughout the USA. July sees the release of a new recording of works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Dvořák for Hyperion Records, while later in the season the quartet will release works by Schubert including his final quartet in G major. In the Spring of 2024 the ensemble will perform and record piano quintets by Price and Dvořák with long-time chamber music partner Marc-Andre Hamelin.

As Associate Artists at London’s Wigmore Hall the Takács will perform four concerts featuring works by Hough, Price, Janacek, Schubert and Beethoven. During the season the ensemble will play at other prestigious European venues including Berlin, Geneva, Linz, Innsbruck, Cambridge and St. Andrews. The Takács will appear at the Adams Chamber Music Festival in New Zealand. The group’s North American engagements include concerts in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC, Vancouver, Ann Arbor, Phoenix, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Portland, Cleveland, Santa Fe and Stanford. The ensemble will perform two Bartók cycles at San Jose State University and Middlebury College and appear for the first time at the Virginia Arts Festival with pianist Olga Kern.

The members of the Takács Quartet are Christoffersen Fellows and Artists in Residence at the University of Colorado, Boulder. For the 23-24 season the quartet enter into a partnership with El Sistema Colorado, working closely with its chamber music education program in Denver. During the summer months the Takács join the faculty at the Music Academy of the West, running an intensive quartet seminar.

In 2021 the Takács won a Presto Music Recording of the Year Award for their recordings of string quartets by Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, and a Gramophone Award with pianist Garrick Ohlsson for piano quintets by Amy Beach and Elgar. Other releases for Hyperion feature works by Haydn, Schubert, Janáček, Smetana, Debussy and Britten, as well as piano quintets by César Franck and Shostakovich (with Marc-André Hamelin), and viola quintets by Brahms and Dvorák (with Lawrence Power). For their CDs on the Decca/London label, the Quartet has won three Gramophone Awards, a Grammy Award, three Japanese Record Academy Awards, Disc of the Year at the inaugural BBC Music Magazine Awards, and Ensemble Album of the Year at the Classical Brits. Full details of all recordings can be found in the Recordings section of the Quartet's website.

The Takács Quartet is known for its innovative programming. In 2021-22 the ensemble partnered with bandoneon virtuoso Julien Labro to premiere new works by Clarice Assad and Bryce Dessner, commissioned by Music Accord. In 2014 the Takács performed a program inspired by Philip Roth’s novel Everyman with Meryl Streep at Princeton, and again with her at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto in 2015. They first performed Everyman at Carnegie Hall in 2007 with Philip Seymour Hoffman. They have toured 14 cities with the poet Robert Pinsky, and played regularly with the Hungarian Folk group Muzsikas.

In 2014 the Takács became the first string quartet to be awarded the Wigmore Hall Medal. In 2012, Gramophone announced that the Takács was the first string quartet to be inducted into its Hall of Fame. The ensemble also won the 2011 Award for Chamber Music and Song presented by the Royal Philharmonic Society in London.

The Takács Quartet was formed in 1975 at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest by Gabor Takács-Nagy, Károly Schranz, Gabor Ormai and András Fejér, while all four were students. The group received international attention in 1977, winning First Prize and the Critics’ Prize at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France. The Quartet also won the Gold Medal at the 1978 Portsmouth and Bordeaux Competitions and First Prizes at the Budapest International String Quartet Competition in 1978 and the Bratislava Competition in 1981. The Quartet made its North American debut tour in 1982. Members of the Takács Quartet are the grateful beneficiaries of an instrument loan by the Drake Foundation.

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