String Quartets Vol. 3 Op. 44, 3, Op. 80

"If you wanted to refute the notion of Mendelssohn as an essentially elegant, lightweight figure, you could hardly do better than these superb performances of two extradinary quartets. The recorded sound is warmly resonant. The Leipzig, combining an impassioned sweep with expressive warmth and subtlety, would now be my first choice."
***** Five Stars (Pick of the Month) BBC Music Magazine (Jan 04)

Felix Mendelssohn and the Leipzig String Quartet have more in common than their immediate and immense success. When the topic of sensational new recordings comes up, these composing and interpreting kindred spirits are increasingly mentioned together in one and the same breath. The BBC catapulted Vol. 1 of the quartets to the position of "Top CD of the Month."

The Leipzig String Quartet, three of the players were principals in the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, was founded in 1988 as New Leipzig String Quartet. Since 1933 the musicians decided to devote all their time to playing Chamber Music and have quickly gone to represent „one of the most distinguished string quartets of the younger European chamber music world" (New Zurich News).
Since then the Leipzig String Quartet has won many international prizes, including 2nd prize at the ARD Competition in Munich (no first prize was awarded) and the Busch Brothers Award in 1991 and the Siemens Music Award in 1992. They were granted a scholarship by the Amadeus Scholarship Fund and the Foundation of Cultural Fund. In 1991 the quartet established its own string quartet series "Pro Quatuor" in Leipzig. During the coming years, they will perform all string quartets of the 1st and 2nd Vienna School at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig.
As members of the „Ensemble Avantgarde Leipzig", the quartet devide their time between performing contemporary music and that composed between 1900 and 1940 and in 1993, the City of Mainz awarded them the Schneider Schott Award. The Leipzig String Quartet currently performs in all the major concert halls of the world. It has also undertaken extended tours through more than forty countries in Europe, North and South America, North Africa, South-East Asia, Australia, Japan and Israel.

The quartet is now in the process of recording its extensive repertoire exclusively on the MDG label. Among these recordings: a complete recording of the quartet literature of the second Viennese school and the first complete CD recording of Franz Schubert's string quartet oeuvre.