Giovanni Bottesini
Three string quartets (Dynamic)

- Second movement (Scherzo. Allegro vivo)
from String Quartet in D major Op.4 Nr. 3
> listen

CD Classica (Italy)
“The interpretative adherence to the changing spirit that pervades this composition illuminates the principal qualities of this quartet, that is to say, a notable versatility and a large ability of characterization. This makes us wish to hear them play more from this repertory.” (Giovanni Tasso)

Strad (UK)
"The members of the Quartetto Elisa give competent accounts... They
produce a beautifully blended sonority and play with impeccable ensemble
and musical insight" (Robin Stowell)

L. Boccherini
6 Quintetti Op.56 (Piero Barbareschi, pianoforte) (Agorà/MusikStraße)

- Second movement (Andantino)
from Quintet in b minor 
Op. 56 Nr.6 (G. 412)
> listen

CD Classica (Italy)
“The Quartetto Elisa[...]has established itself at a top level, showing, on par with the excellent pianist Piero Barbareschi, a notable congeniality with this repertory[...] An extremely worthy recording that definitely deserves a place in everyone’s music collection. “(Giovanni Tasso)

Mozart’s transcriptions from Bach’s The Well-tempered Clavier, The Organ Sonatas, The Art of Fugue (Antes Concerto)

- Fugue V from "Five Fugues"
from The Well-Tempered Clavier by J.S. Bach KV 405
> listen

Amadeus (Italy)
“[...]this beautiful recording of the Quartetto Elisa suggests a more pertinent and correct potrait of Mozart[...] A handful of compositions from which – in the very solid interpretation of the Quartetto Elisa – an intellectual energy and an absolute concentration is revealed, that tells us much more about Mozart.” (m.r.z.)

L. Brouwer / Beatles
Collection 2 folk songs (Frame)

- Penny Lane from "Seven songs after
the Beatles" (Victor Pellegrini, guitar)
> listen

"[…]The Lennon-McCartney songs are elaborated in different ways, each referring to either a composer or a situation from the western tradition: Bartók in Eleanor Rigby with its contrapuntal texture and polytonal harmony; Hindemith in Penny Lane with its fourth-chord harmony and the atonal neoclassicism of its introduction and coda; the characteristic string textures of Dvorák in She’s leaving home; Stravinsky in A ticket to ride; a chromatic model in Here, there and everywhere; the counterpoint of the Elizabethan viol consort in Yesterday; […]" Paolo Paolini (translated by H. Ward Perkins)

Elisa Quartet. Live in Japan
An all Italian Programme

- Verdi: String Quartet in E minor
Third movement: Prestissimo
> listen

• - Boccherini: Quartet in D major Op. 6/1 (G.165)
• - Verdi: String Quartet in E minor
• - Puccini: "Crisantemi" for String Quartet
• - Respighi: "Tramonto" for Soprano and String Quartet (Noriko Sasaki, Soprano)
• (Encore)
• - Oono Tadasuke: "Yoimachigusa" (Noriko Sasaki, Soprano)
• - Mozart: Divertimento in F major K. 137 (First Movement)

Pietro Grossi
Bit Art (Atopos)
live recording

Composition no.12 (extract)
> listen

ClassicalNet
Pietro Grossi (1917-2002) is an Italian composer with the (sounds of) strings in his blood. Trained as a cellist and composer, he had a successful and distinguished solo performing career, was a respected and prominent teacher and innovator with electronic music and the celebration of modern music through festivals, orchestral projects and research. The present CD from the groundbreaking and ever-enterprising Italian Atopos label contains seven examples of his earlier instrumental music with the last item only, Create C, from 1972, for synthesized resources.
[...] this CD shows ways in which not only the string quartet (the Quartetto Elisa appears in three of the works here), but also the three double basses of Marco Martelli, Marco Mazzinghi and Stella Sorgente and music for voice and piano (Donatella Debolini and Giancarlo Cardini respectively) as well as Andrea Nannoni's cello all answer questions about these relationships between time and tone. [...]
Most of the pieces are relatively short. There is an economy, a concentration on what it is to experience the sounds which the instruments make, that is very striking to the listener. Composizione No 6 [tr.7], for example, from 1960, has its focus on the very nature of slow, deliberate string sound where intervals and even harmony are at times all but incidental... listen, too, to the measured and tight study from 'Tre Pezzi' (1960) [tr.8]. Grossi's delight in the mechanics of horsehair on gut (etc) is evident. Not, though, that this is dry or pointlessly casual exploration. There is structure in the way that Berg, rather than Webern, knew structure. The same applies in the case of the one vocal work here, Composizione No 11 (1961). The voice uses word-free vocalizations to suggest the quiet power of vowels and vowel sounds. [...] (Marc Sealey)