Marteau: Complete Works for String Quartet, Vol. 1

It often happens that the compositional oeuvre of a renowned and perhaps even legendary performing artist disappears from view for quite a long time. In the case of Henri Marteau this disappearance was due in part to the fact that some of his compositions remained unpublished. Today the violinist Henri Marteau is known mostly only to specialists or fans of Max Reger's music. After all, during the early years of the twentieth century Marteau was an important violin interpreter of Reger's works. The close association between Marteau and Reger, who arranged Marteau's Cello Concerto for piano in 1905, the year of the publication of the String Quartet No. 2, is sometimes quite evident here and in many other works by him. However, the contrapuntal intricacy of Marteau's quartet also holds in store chromatic passages more reminiscent of Nielsen and his Quartet in E flat major op. 14 from 1897-98 than Reger's modulations. In its own way the quartet very much anticipates developments far into the twentieth century while exploring German and French musical influence. The CD also includes Marteau's Huit Melodies for soprano and string quartet – sung by Karine Deshayes, who in 2016 was named the 'Lyric Artist of the Year' for the second time at the prize ceremony of the Victoires de la Musique.