Quatuor Belcea 

"The old girl has just bought a string quartet off me for quite a sum, which will keep the wolf away for a bit, so I can’t complain," rejoiced Benjamin Britten in July 1941. He has just received $400 from Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge – among other sponsors of Bartók's Fifth or Schoenberg's Fourth, no less – to give birth to his Opus 25. A trial run of some kind? No, not really. But officially his First, which he considers his "best piece so far". The same requirement for Brahms who, after many sins of youth, also allowed himself (at last!) to number a work for the sixteen strings in 1873. The Belcea will be able to give it a violently worried tone, as in the recording under the Alpha flag which earned them a Diapason d'Or in 2016.

COREALISATION Jeanine Roze Production / Théâtre des Champs-Elysées