Complete Glazunov string quartets, vol.1 on Naxos

[eschiss1]

Don't see anyone else having mentioned this. Expected April 24 2026.

[tuatara442442]

It is quite amazing to realize that MDG's is the only complete Glazunov SQ cycle now available.
More amazing to realize, by the way, that the first two of Gliere's string sextets are not yet commercially recorded...

[eschiss1]

I'll bite, is there nowhere one can acquire/purchase the Olympia set, even as an Alto reissue?

[John Boyer]

You could try for a used copy on eBay or Amazon. I thought I had it, but now that I look at my shelves I realize I have the MDG set.

I may be misremembering, but didn't Naxos already have an uncollected set of all the Glazunov (rendered as "louts enough" by the dictation engine) chamber music for strings? I thought over the years they had worked their way through them.

[eschiss1]

Hrm. I meant currently available, basically.... The Shostakovich Quartet recordings came out on Melodiya around 1981/2 etc. on LP, on CD on Mobile Fidelity in the 1980s and then on Olympia in the late 1980s-1990s; there's the MDG set; Praga Digitals released a CD of quartets 3 and 4 in 2014 with the Zemlinsky Quartet...

As to Naxos, maybe his string quintet and a couple of other things but not, I think, the string quartets. I may be mistaken.

[eschiss1]

Some of the individual quartets have a longer recording history, of course, but there have been it does seem there may have been only the two complete sets (nos. 3 & 5, the suite Op.35, and the Novelettes Op.15, seem to be more common one-offs, sometimes coupled with works by other composers ; that Praga Digitals seems to be rare in also including no.4.)

[tuatara442442]

I'll bite, is there nowhere one can acquire/purchase the Olympia set, even as an Alto reissue?

Well, I've always thought Glazunov SQ series on Olympia is strangely incomplete, as they specialized in Russian-Soviet music. I think I've spent too much time on streaming services, and got the impression that Olympia/Alto set is incomplete there...

[eschiss1]

Which quartet works of his are lacking from it? (According to discogs, the Shostakovich Quartet did record 6, 7, 4, quintet, 1, 2 on LP, and apparently the CD collection had-
quartets 3, 5 and other works (Shostakovich Quartet edition volume 1, reissued in 2021 on Alto)
quartets 6, 7 (volume 6)
And I did see quartets 2 & 4 on Olympia  -somewhere- ah. Melodiya/Olympia MCD 173. But quartet 1 may not have been reissued after all then?..., I may have to double-check...

[eschiss1]

Ah, Glazunov quartet 1 played by the Shostakovich quartet, coupled with Tchaikovsky's piano trio and other works, released on Olympia around the same time- that's there.