The Leoncuro Quartet: Out of Vienna Album Review – A Fascinating Exploration of Viennese Modernism | classical music

FFormed in Berlin in 2019, the Leoncuro Quartet are no strangers to the UK having won first prize and nine special prizes at the 2022 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition. In their new disc they explore three composers who embody the most cutting-edge music that might have been encountered in the Austrian capital on both sides of the Great War.

Alban Berg and Anton Webern took Schoenberg’s theories of free atonality and the 12-tone system in somewhat different directions. Berg’s lyrical suite was an ardent outpouring of his mistress, and the quartet aptly captures the moody sensuality of this intense and complex music. Andante Amoroso faints. Allegro Misterioso fingering on muted strings; Presto Delirando is positively sexual. The gameplay is unflinching and brimming with imaginative detail.

A memorial to his mother, Webern’s five pieces from 1909 were his first atonal string quartet. The composer’s dynamic versatility and breadth of imagination is astonishing, as is the maturity and expressiveness of interpretation here. Only four years old, Langsamer Satz is the most romantic thing Webern ever wrote: a musical case of the road not taken.

Divided between them is Erwin Schulhoff’s Five Pieces, a quirky suite that runs the gamut, from a slyly dispatched Viennese waltz to an Argentine tango. The Czech-born composer has embraced many musical styles throughout his career, but here he seems to fully enjoy his absurdist phase. Once again, playback and recorded sound are top notch.