First Steps

Can Webern and Schoenberg sound like Mahler and Wagner? Or Rachmaninov like Tchaikovsky and Puccini like Verdi? Discover these surprising early works of famous composers. All are engaged in their quest to musical iden- tity, as none of them were celebrated yet like they would be later.

This new CD of the Ruysdael Quartet features 6 stunning quartet miniatures as well as the remarkable Quartet in F major by Benjamin Britten, written when the composer was only 13 years old. The compositions on First Steps are hardly ever performed and put together for the first time on this unique album.