A não perder, os quartetos de cordas de Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), pelo Rubio Quartet. A caixa da holandesa Brilliant Classics, Complete String Quartets, que inclui a totalidade dos 15 quartetos escritos pelo compositor russo entre 1935 e 1974, foi reposta à venda, e é uma pechincha. Custou-me € 17 e picos, mas ainda se pode encontrar mais barata na net. A leitura do belga Rubio String Quartet (Dirk Van de Velde, Dirk Van den Hauwe, Marc Sonnaert e Peter Devos), de 2003, gravada ao vivo numa igreja, em Mullem, Bélgica, entre Abril e Setembro de 2002, vem somar-se às versões anteriores, mais ou menos conhecidas, de outros quartetos que se abalançaram à integral, como o Borodin Quartet, o St. Petersburg String Quartet, Quatuor Danel, Fitzwilliam String Quartet, Shostakovich Quartet, Rasumovsky Quartet, Sorrel Quartet, Manhattan Quartet ou o Emerson String Quartet.
The Rubio String Quartet is one of the preeminent string quartets in Europe. Formed in 1991, the quartet wascoached in the great classical and romantic repertoire by the Melos Quartet from Stuttgart. Today they play the full range of the string quartet repertoire from Haydn to Alfred Schnittke and Stephen Paulus. Natives of Belgium, they have hadseveral Flemish composers dedicate works to them. The quartet is regularly invited to play at major music festivals, such as the Edinburgh Festival and the Festival of Flanders. In 1996 they gave concerts in the United States and China as “cultural ambassadors” of the Flemish Community. In November 1997 they made their New York debut at CarnegieHall. The Rubio’s discography includes nine CDs, including the string quartets of Shostakovich for the Globe label, and a recording of piano quintets by Schumann and Brahms with the Dutch pianist Paul Komen. A live recording of the complete Shostakovich quartets was released on Brilliant Records in January 2003.
