Reviews
“...magnificent and unlikely to have been bettered by any competitors in the catalogue. The close recording in a good ambience (Domovina Studio Prague) has a vivid immediacy which enhances this passionate music.”
(Smetana Quartets) Musical Pointers
“The integration of the ensemble is stunning... intonation is a joy in itself... utterly natural musicianship”
Pittsburgh Tribune
“Recently, I´ve been leading discussions of how interpretation affects our perception of music, and nothing demonstrates this more vividly than the lithe, surging performance by Martin Kasik and the Wihan Quartet of Schumann´s Piano Quintet, which comes closest to capturing my sense of what the composer´s personality must have been. It is a present I would be pleased to give.”
The Gramophone
“Schubert’s C Major Quintet was quite simply as fine a performance as one is ever likely to hear, in a reading which showed profound understanding of the music, everything perfectly judged and superbly played. It was a performance that will remain in the memory for a long time.”
Eastern Daily Press
"They were superb accounts, dynamically exact and with affection lavished on every phrase."
Musical Opinion
"Retaining its founding members, it is an ideally balanced quartet with immaculate rapport...the playing is excellent...perfect articulation and intonation....sparkles with life"
The Strad
"The playing throughout was light, clearly textured and sensitive to the composer's detailed dynamics, yet with a freedom to tempo markings that were used in good taste to create moments that were magical."
Yorkshire Post
"The smiling, outdoor quality of the Dvorak could hardly have been better captured. The Andante Cantabile of the Beethoven demonstrated effectively the Wihan's expressive range.... Ensembles as accomplished as this benefit enormously from the excellent acoustics of St Luke's, which enhance the natural grain and texture of their tone."
London Evening Standard
"...a remarkably unified, dark, polished-hardwood blend; at times, they sounded like four violas...... with phrases pulled expressively about and stretched....that soaring high E as penetrating and intense as I've heard. Chamber Music doesn't get more emotional than this very often."
Los Angeles Times
"The sound these Czech musicians make - beautifully balanced, centered in warm, dark regions of tone colour, musical in every part - is deeply pleasurable and also deeply traditional. The Wihan's playing is roomy with rubato, and the musicians regroup with natural ease around whichever of them has the main line at the moment."
The New York Times
"The co-ordination among violinists Leos Cepicky and Jan Schulmeister, violist Jiri Zigmund and cellist Ales Kasprik was unfailingly secure, and the harmonies - whether the ethereal chords of the slow movement or the vigorous ones of the finale - were full and well-balanced. Individual qualities of the players came out in the Beethoven like calling cards presented to a butler-Cepicky's brilliant, slightly febrile sound, Schulmeister's somewhat smokey, mysterious tone, the horn-like romantic quality of Zigmund's viola, and the tightly focused dependable, almost conversational nature of Kasprik's cello."
The Indianapolis Star
"All good fairies seem to be poised on the bows of the Wihan Quartet; absolute technical perfection, incomparably polished sonorities, perfect harmony of ensemble playing, a rare unanimity of sound, elegance, an aristocratic purity of phrasing, a style simultaneously uplifting and flamboyant, and with a sovereign and timeless classicism, a rich expressive range and an iron-fisted suppleness. An electrifying CD, from a young group that must find its place among the best quartets of this moment."
PFITZNER Quartet No. 2/ SCHOENBERG Quartet No.4
Repertoire
"In Janacek's second quartet, 'Intimate Letters', the Wihan Quartet show themselves to be at the summit of their art with an extraordinary density of tone, an intense and moving expressiveness and poetry torn from the surface of the skin - a reading to be engraved in letters of gold in the rich annals of the Stavelot Festival."
La Libre Belgique
"....the performance of Dvorak's Quartet No 9 in D minor was a revelation. I have never heard the quartet performed with such passion and emotional depth...there were times when the intensity of the musicians came close to generating a symphonic breadth and power that is rarely heard in chamber music." Kentish Times
"Their unity was a hundred percent in evidence: each and every nuance and accent. The result was a perfect fluid interpretation, which really suited the youthful precocity of Beethoven."
Luxemburg 'Wort
"I cannot remember so auspicious a musical discovery since I first heard the teenage Yo-Yo Ma."
The Strad
"They play with one mind, singing tone and with fine tuning."
Evening Standard
"The ensemble was magnificent, a beautiful rounded sonority with a perfect balance in all four voices and displaying virtuosity and unusual sensitivity."
Notes en Echo, Paris
"It was in the performance of Ravel's String Quartet that the brilliance of the Wihan Quartet was fully demonstrated and they gave us a magical performance of this lovely work."
Richmond Times
"From the outset, it was clear that, with the Wihan String Quartet, we were in the presence of an outstanding group of musicians who, by their brilliance and sensitivity, bring to their audience an extraordinary and revealing insight into the passion, intensity and beauty of the music of their native land."
Tunbridge Wells Courier
"Given playing of such virtuosic quality it is surely only a matter of time before the Wihan Quartet becomes a household name."
The Strad
"The young Wihan Quartet from the Czech Republic, gives a vision just as passionate but less stolid and distinctly lighter. The intonation is impeccable and the tone seductive."
***** Hugo Wolf String Quartet in D minor and Intermezzo
Diapason
More Reviews to be found in the News section
