Quatuor Voce & Lise Berthaud - Mozart & Brahms: String Quintets (2015)

After its first two recordings, devoted to Schubert then Beethoven, highly praised and recommended by the critics (both ffff in Télérama, recommended by The Strad...), this eclectic, innovative quartet is now celebrating its tenth anniversary by tackling the string quintets of Mozart and Brahms.

These two scores, representative of the culmination of a career in the case of Brahms and, for Mozart, the end of a life, are sustained by vigorous inspiration and frothing energy. Whereas the Brahms Quintet, both brilliant and highly moving, recalls some of his best known themes (including that of the Sextet, Op. 18, used by Louis Malle in his film The Lovers), Mozart jotted down on paper the four movements of a work that speaks intensely about him, in the diversity of its moods and the complexity of its writing.

Named ‘Rising Star’ for the last season by the European Chamber Hall Organisation, the Voce Quartet has performed in venues the world over. For this project, it calls on Lise Berthaud, one of the most brilliant French violists, to round out the quintet.