Constanze Quartet: Mayer

The Strad Issue: October 2026

Description: Plenty to beguile in this second volume of Mayer

Musicians: Constanze Quartet

Works: Mayer: String Quartets vol.2: Quartet in G minor; Quartet in F major

Catalogue number: CPO 555601-2

If France has Louise Farrenc and Augusta Holmès, then Germany has Emilie Mayer – all of them 19th-century women composers whose works are now receiving more serious attention. CPO has consistently championed them, having recorded Mayer’s six extant symphonies (two of the eight are missing), and now the Constanze Quartet follows its first instalment of Mayer’s string quartets (reviewed here) with this second release. Bert Hagels in his in-depth booklet notes – a valuable primer on the composer, with extensive background information as well as musical analysis – reveals there are seven extant quartets, though Mayer might have composed as many as 14.

Stylistically, there’s little to scare the horses, the idiom being just on the Romantic side of the Classical/Romantic border. There is Mozartian clarity yet also a particular song-like lyricism. Mendelssohn is another model, the Scherzo of the G minor Quartet bearing his influence in its lightness, though that of the F major is rather more four-square, an impression deepened by its fugato section.

Just occasionally the Constanze Quartet could be more pliable, for instance in the G major’s first movement with its coy three-quaver upbeat. But the balance and matching of tone colour are finely judged and the textures transparent. The Constanze’s fine playing also reveals layers of muted and subdued moods, making for a highly pleasurable listen.

EDWARD BHESANIA