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ALEXANDER STRING QUARTET
JOYCE YANG, PIANO
FCL 2020

Named by MusicWeb International as one of the Recordings of the Year 2019!

“To my ear this [the ‘American’ quartet] is pretty much an ideal performance.... Somehow, the players have managed to return to a very standard work in the repertoire and play it with the bright-eyed brilliance of first acquaintance — genuinely a performance to cherish....Indeed, almost exactly the same can be said of the Piano Quintet performance that shares the disc....This has to be a recording given the highest accolades.” — previous "Recording of the Month" review by Nick Barnard, Music-Web International (FCL 2020 Locale)

Five Star AllMusic Review!

“There is absolutely no shortage of recordings of these two popular Dvořák works, but this one is a standout. Consider this pairing of the String Quartet in F major, Op. 96 ("American"), with the Piano Quintet in A major, Op. 81. The latter work features Joyce Yang on piano, seamlessly adapting herself to the quartet's lively warmth. The "American" quartet is even better, with the group catching the dance rhythms that percolate throughout but are sometimes lost in the cool string quartet medium. Sample the Molto vivace Scherzo of the quartet, which has a lightness that has rarely been achieved elsewhere. Each movement of both works reveals original ideas…. Impressive work that adds to the sterling reputation of this ensemble.” — James Manheim, AllMusic Review (Nov. 2019, FCL 2020 Locale)

“…The Alexander String Quartet, joined by Joyce Yang in Dvořák’s Piano Quintet, has done it again. Hard on the heels of the ASQ’s recent release of Mozart’s last three string quartets, and the ensemble’s only slightly less recent release of Mozart’s two piano quartets with Joyce Yang, this exceptionally well-attuned group of players brings us two of Dvořák’s happiest, most inspired chamber works in what are quite possibly the happiest, most inspired performances of them I’ve ever heard. …overflowing with warmth, joyfulness, non-stop Czech-inflected melodies and rhythms, and their composer’s sense of delight in his own gifts for harmony and invention.
The opening of the Piano Quintet, for example, is near the top of my Top-10 list of the most memorable and gloriously beautiful beginnings of a work ever written, and the playing of it, first by the ensemble’s cellist, Sandy Wilson, and then taken up in bar 61 by violinist Zakarias Grafilo, is of such nuanced phrasing, modulated dynamics, and emotional expressiveness that it will take your breath away. And Joyce Yang’s easeful triplets are the downy pillow on which the melody lays its head. … I find it so special that in the not too distant future, I hope to enter it in Fanfare’s Classical Hall of Fame.” — Jerry Dubins, Fanfare Magazine "Not To Be Missed" (Sept. 2019, FCL 2020 Locale)

“The Alexander String Quartet and Joyce Yang give us spirited and compassionate readings of these works that are close to ideal. If there are no shocking reinterpretations there are also no disappointments whatsoever. It is a golden program played with the finest care for a broad sweep and finely turned detail. Bravo!” — Grego Applegate Edwards, Classical-Modern Music Review (Sept. 2019, FCL 2020 Locale)

“I first encountered the pairing of the Alexander Quartet with Joyce Yang in a release from 2014 of the Schumann and Brahms quintets which absolutely bowled me over and became one of my Records of the Year. … Since that release, she has joined the Alexanders, or at least three of them, in the Mozart quartets to acclaim. … I’m pleased to report that the partnership with Joyce Yang, so persuasive in Brahms and Schumann, is equally so in the Quintet. From the first, the effect is electric; the hairs on the back of my neck standing up almost throughout.” — David Barker, MusicWeb International (Oct. 2019, FCL 2020 Locale)

“…the ‘American’ quartet is clearly one of the finest ever recorded” — Lynn René Bayley, Art Music Lounge (Aug. 2019, FCL 2020 Locale)

“…the Alexander String Quartet delivers profoundly beautiful readings of two Dvořák masterpieces with a remarkable feeling of freshness. No passage is played by rote, and you never feel the fatigue of years. For an ensemble founded in 1981, this is a gratifying achievement and a boon to the listener… The “American” Quartet wins over any listener, which tempts ensembles to coast. In this case, however, the Alexanders pay close attention to phrasing, modulations, and rhythm, with the result that the Scherzo, for example, feels bright and new… If the quartet performance is an unqualified success—including excellent, lifelike recorded sound—the Piano Quintet goes a step farther… Yang is at once a soloist and an ensemble player here… It’s hard to persuade collectors that a new arrival surpasses old favorites, but this Dvořák pairing rivals any past recording I’ve ever heard… If you value youthful verve, turn here. The fatigue factor has been banished entirely.” — Huntley Dent, Fanfare Magazine "Not To Be Missed" (Sept. 2019, FCL 2020 Locale)

Excerpts from Eric Bromberger's liner notes:

Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Dvořák all learned to play the violin while they were boys, and all of them quickly learned to play the viola as well. In fact, all four seemed to favor the viola. Beethoven and Dvořák spent part of their apprentice years playing the viola in orchestras, and all four composers preferred to play viola when they played chamber music. Perhaps — as composers — they liked feeling themselves inside the music, playing cross-rhythms, shaping accompaniment figures to the melodic line, and facilitating harmonic changes.
    More than the other three, Dvořák played the viola professionally, supporting himself and his family for nine years during his long struggle to succeed as a composer. As a violist in the Provisional Theatre Orchestra in Prague, Dvořák had a number of notable musical experiences, among them playing an 1863 concert under the direction of Wagner and performing the premiere of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride in 1866. Dvořák was able to give up orchestral work for good when he was 32, but the viola remained important to him throughout his life. In fact, the instrument’s rich, woody sonority would play a central role in the two pieces on this disc, his so-called “American” Quartet and his Piano Quintet. Composed many years after Dvořák had given up playing the viola professionally, both make central use of that instrument.

String Quartet in F Major, Opus 96 “American”
During his three-year tenure as director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York (1892–95), Dvořák was fascinated by life in the New World, but he missed his family — four of his six children had remained in Bohemia — and his homeland. Dvořák’s secretary in New York City was a young violinist named Josef Jan Kovarřík, who had grown up in the Czech community of Spillville, Iowa. Kovarřík invited Dvořák to spend the summer of 1893 in Spillville, and the composer gladly accepted. There, with his wife (and now all his children), Dvořák spent a happy and productive summer, surrounded by familiar language, customs, and food. He was amazed by Iowa’s vast prairies and forests, he played the organ in the Spillville church, he heard native birds, and he watched as local Indians came into the village to sell herbs and dance.
     Dvořák also composed that summer. He sketched the String Quartet in F Major in only three days (June 8–10, 1893) and had it complete in fifteen. Dvořák’s comment was concise: “Thank God. It went quickly. I am satisfied.” Early audiences were more than satisfied. The Kneisel Quartet gave the official premiere in Boston on January 1, 1894, and performed it fifty times over the next several seasons. The quartet quickly acquired the nickname “American.” The source of that nickname is uncertain, but it has become an inescapable part of how we think of this music, and nationalistic Americans were quick to claim that here at last was an authentic American classical music based on American materials. Dvořák would have none of that. He would later denounce any “nonsense about my having made use of original American melodies. I have only composed in the spirit of such American national melodies.” He himself offered a useful introduction to his quartet: “When I wrote this quartet in the Czech community of Spillville in 1893, I wanted to write something for once that was very melodious and straightforward, and dear Papa Haydn kept appearing before my eyes, and that is why it all turned out so simply. And it’s good that it did.”
     Part of the charm of this quartet is precisely that it did turn “out so simply” and that it is so “melodious and straightforward.” The Quartet in F Major is full of instantly memorable tunes and boundless energy, and its sunny surface is seldom clouded by harmonic or textural complexities. One might not readily identify “Papa Haydn” as the father of this quartet, but that older master’s cheerful spirits and sophisticated writing for strings are very much part of this music.    [...]

Piano Quintet in A Major, Opus 81
In the summer of 1887 Antonín Dvořák took his large family to their summer home at Vysoka, in the forests and fields about forty miles south of Prague. It was a very good time for the 46-year-old composer. After years of struggle and poverty, he suddenly found himself famous: his Slavonic Dances were being played around the world, and his Seventh Symphony had been premiered to instant acclaim in London two years earlier. Dvořák found time to relax at Vysoka that summer, and he also found time to compose. Dvořák was usually one of the fastest of composers, able to complete a work quickly once he had sketched it. That August he began a new work, a Piano Quintet, but this one took him some time — he did not complete it until well into October, and it was premiered in Prague the following January.
    Dvořák was now at the height of his powers, and the Quintet shows the hand of a master at every instant. This is tremendously vital music, full of fire and soaring melodies — it is a measure of this music’s sweep that the first violin and piano are often set in their highest registers. As a composer, Dvořák was always torn between the classical forms of the Viennese masters (including his friend Brahms) and his own passionate Czech nationalism. Perhaps some of the secret of the success of the Piano Quintet is that it manages to combine those two kinds of music so successfully: Dvořák writes in classical forms like scherzo, rondo, and sonata form, but he also employs characteristic Czech forms like the dumka and furiant. That makes for an intoxicating mix, and perhaps a further source of this music’s appeal is its heavy reliance on the sound of the viola — in this Quintet the viola presents several of the main ideas, and its dusky sound is central to the rich sonority of this music.
    It is the cello, though, that has the opening idea of the Allegro, ma non tanto. This long melody — Dvořák marks it espressivo — suddenly explodes with energy and is extended at length before the viola introduces the sharply pulsed second theme. In sonata form, this movement ranges from a dreamy delicacy to thunderous tuttis, and sometimes those changes are sudden. The music is also is full of beautifully shaded moments, passages that flicker effortlessly between different keys in the manner of Schubert, a composer Dvořák very much admired.     [...]