Sony Classical Releases The Guarneri String Quartet’s Complete RCA Victor Collection

The collection of 49 discs comprises nine recordings new to CD and one  previously unreleased recording

Sony Classical has announced the Complete RCA Victor Collection of the Guarneri String Quartet, which features all the group’s recordings made between 1965 and 2005. 

The quartets and arrangements recorded across 49 discs include those by Smetana, Dvorák, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Grieg, Beethoven, Schubert, Debussy, Ravel, Fauré, Wolf, Bartók, Haydn, Borodin, Dohnányi, Verdi, and Kodály. 

The collection’s previously unreleased recording is of the quartet’s rendition of Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 3 in D Major, Op. 44 No. 1. 

Among the discs also include the Beethoven cycle, which were recorded in full for RCA between 1966 and 1969. 

More works include Piano Quintets and Quartets by Brahms, Schumann, Dvorák, Fauré, Mozart — with many featuring pianist Arthur Rubinstein, who was the quartet’s longtime keyboard partner. 

“Rubinstein and the Guarneris search out to equally convincing effect the flowingly lyrical aspects of the music, and this yields special rewards in a ravishing slow movement [the Brahms],” wrote the HiFi Stereo Review. 

The Guarneri String Quartet was formed in the early 1960s by four young musicians who were attending Rudolf Serkin’s Marlboro School and Festival. Among their mentors at the time included Serkin, Alexander Schneider, and Pablo Casals. 

Comprising violinists Arnold Steinhardt and John Dalley, violist Michael Tree, and cellist David Soyer, the quartet gave its debut performances in 1964 with the string quartets of Mendelssohn and Hindemith. 

Less than a year later, the group made its first recordings under contract to RCA Victor, and over the next 45 years, would perform worldwide and amass an eclectic and award-winning discography. The quartet disbanded in 2009. 

To purchase and listen to the album, click here. 

“The Guarneri ensemble does itself proud throughout this disc — most notably in the Mendelssohn, in which they display a tonal homogeneity and a warmth of phrasing that are truly striking,” a HiFi Stereo Review critic added. “It is as though one instrument, not four, were producing the lovely sound that emerges from the speakers. Happily, the RCA recording staff has come up here with a string quartet sonority of the utmost intimacy, yet endowed with just enough room tone to enhance the naturally warm tone of the Guarneris.

“If I had to make the choice of a very few records to take with me to a desert island, I’d choose recordings of the last five Beethoven string quartets … The Guarneri is, without a doubt, one of the most extraordinary string quartets before the public these days: the group has an absolutely stunning sense of both soloistic and ensemble color. Indeed, I can’t think of another string quartet that can match them for sheer sensuous appeal.”