Debut Album by Quartet Opus13 Pairs Mendelssohn and Grieg, Guardian Review Finds

A new recording by the string quartet Opus13, pairing works by Felix Mendelssohn and Edvard Grieg, has been described as an "assured, distinctive debut" in a review published by The Guardian's music section on September 17, 2026.

According to the review, Opus13 formed in Oslo in 2014 when its members were teenagers, taking their name from the first piece they played together as a group. That work, Mendelssohn's String Quartet Op 13 No 2, opens the new album, released on the Alpha Classics label.

The review notes that the quartet are current BBC New Generation Artists and were winners of last year's Wigmore Hall and Bordeaux string quartet competitions. It states that the group's performance of the Mendelssohn quartet moves from a "brief, soulful introduction" into a "tense, runaway allegro," with the slow movement played with an "intense warmth" that the reviewer compares favorably to Beethoven's adagios, whose influence on the piece is described as evident.

The Mendelssohn work is followed on the album by Grieg's String Quartet No 1, which the review describes as built on "insistent repetition" that the quartet renders in a way that builds momentum rather than diminishing it. The review adds that a folk-inflected style introduced in the second movement develops further in the third movement, which incorporates elements of Nordic fiddle music described as "exuberant yet elegant."

The album concludes with an encore arrangement of Grieg's "Solveig's Song," which the review notes is credited to the quartet as a group rather than to an individual arranger, a detail the reviewer says is unsurprising given the ensemble's collaborative character.