Hold on to your hats, chamber music fans. You're going to love our new videos of the New Orford String Quartet (NOSQ) playing Beethoven's Razumovsky quartets, Op. 59.

The NOSQ is Canada's top string quartet, and they've taken our chamber music scene by storm. Their story is interesting: the quartet's members occupy first chairs in the Montreal and Toronto Symphony orchestras; violinists Jonathan Crow and Andrew Wan are the concertmasters of the TSO and MSO, respectively; Eric Nowlin is associate principal viola of the TSO and Brian Manker is principal cello of the MSO.

They could have called their group the 401 Quartet, since they probably spend a lot of time on the highway that connects Toronto and Montreal. Instead, they named themselves after the highly successful Orford String Quartet, which disbanded in 1991, and aim to carry on the excellent tradition established by those forebears.

If you have seen the NOSQ perform, then you already know this group heralds an exciting new era of chamber music in Canada. If you haven't, then our videos will convince you.

This week, we present their performance of the first of Beethoven's three Razumovsky quartets, Op. 59.

We asked the quartet members to introduce it:

ListenNowlin: "It's steak and potatoes."
Crow: "It's got a monumental first movement, an incredibly exciting finale, a beautiful slow
                 movement and a slightly clever scherzo."

Below are the videos, recorded in October 2012 at Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto.

First movement: Allegro

 

Second movement: Allegretto vivace e sempre scherzando

 

Third and fourth movements: Adagio molto e mesto – Thème Russe: Allegro

 

Related:

New Orford String Quartet's artist page on CBC Music

Concert review: Yesterday's New Orford String Quartet performance closes open Schubert question

Brahms, Beethoven and beer: Jonathan Crow shares a 2-4 of answers

 

posted by Robert Rowat on Jan 15, 2013