Weigl Karl: String Quartets Nos. 7 & 8

Following Karl Weigls Cello Concerto, cpo are now releasing his last two String Quartets, his seventh and eighth such works, neither of which were performed during his lifetime. The premiere of Quartet No. 7 was held at the Austrian Institute in New York in 1956, seven years after the composers death, and the Concord Quartet premiered Quartet No. 8 at Lincoln Center in New York, in 1973. Weigl completed his penultimate quartet in January 1942 and this work adheres to the finely felt lyricism generally distinguishing his style. It is a work without 'screams' and hardly anything would lead us to suspect that it is not a composition from Weigls years in Vienna. The same cannot be said of his eighth and last quartet. Weigl knew how to shock his listeners without needing to seek refuge in unresolved dissonances. And this quartet indeed is shocking. The first movement is blunt and mysterious at one and the same time. With its dotted motif the fugued development section strives toward a coda that in the end modulates from minor to major without prior warning.