Magnard, Fauré: String Quartets / Quatuor Ysaÿe

Unless I’ve missed something, this is the first recorded performance of the Magnard Quartet since the Artis Quartet’s tilt at it nearly two decades ago (Accord 220 602). A reading by the estimable Via Nova Quartet may have been offered about the same time, but seems never to have been available domestically. Composed over 1902–03—between Guercoeur and the Hymne à Vénus—and similar in appeal to the symphonies, the Quartet offers a propulsive, substantial first movement, a briskly bracing Sérénade, an extended movement in his familiar funèbre vein, and a frolicsome finale of Danses. Of Magnard’s 21 extant works this is the most difficult to know, by virtue of its compactness, and the one, once known, one may well come to love the best. Which is to say that you will want this more than passable performance. On the other hand, Fauré’s Quartet, his final work, does not lack for recorded performances, though most—the Ysaÿe’s included—run aground on the shoals of stylistic incomprehension. Fo