STR QNT in C Major D. 956 - Premium String Quartet Sheet Music for Classical Musicians & Music Students | Perfect for Performances, Practice & Study

Probably no one is going to agree on this piece. I have at least 8 or 9 recordings, and pretty much all of them have at least some minor issues. I suppose one just imagines pure nirvana, and that may be unrealistic. That said, I believe this recording is - by some considerable margin - the best modern one I have heard. It is certainly the best HD (SACD/Blu-ray Audio) one there is. I might quibble with the tempo of the 2nd movt., which for me is fractionally, and I do mean FRACTIONALLY (maybe I am even coming around to their viewpoint) fast. Other than that, the performance is fabulous: passionate, dynamic, nuanced, sensitive to issues of rubato. Perhaps the controversial aspect is the Tacet "surround" philosophy, which in this recording places the two cellos in the back channels. For me this is totally convincing. Listening at home is not the same as a concert experience, and for me at least this is in many ways better. If you have the equipment (5 equal, large, high performance speakers and the electronics to go with them) it simply doesn't get better than this as an immersive experience. The amazing thing, however - especially now, when a "home theater" 5.1 (at least) surround sound system is really pretty easy and pretty cheap to set up - is that you can buy a $50 Bluray player and have this sort of audio quality on what amounts to a shoestring budget. More people need to give this a try, and this disc is a guaranteed ticket-to-ride in audio bliss!