Quartet Integra—Kyoka Misawa and Rintaro Kikuno on violins, Itsuki Yamamoto on viola, and cellist Ye Un Park—brings astonishing versatility and depth to music spanning the Classical, Romantic, Contemporary, and Renaissance eras.
Their album Beethoven, Ligeti & Lefkowitz [Pure DSD] opens with Beethoven’s final quartet, Op. 135, a late-Romantic yet subtly backward-glancing masterpiece premiered after the composer’s death, and continues with a riveting performance of Ligeti’s explosive yet unexpectedly beautiful String Quartet No. 2, a work the ensemble delivers with clarity, humor, and fearless energy.
The program concludes with the World Premiere Recording of David S. Lefkowitz’s Green Mountains, Now Black, a richly layered new work that intertwines Monteverdi quotations with the composer’s emotional response to the 2025 Los Angeles fires, blending historical resonance with urgent contemporary expression.
Celebrated as the most exciting young quartet to emerge from Japan (with Ye Un from Korea) since the storied Tokyo String Quartet, these musicians carry forward a lineage nurtured by mentors Martin Beaver and Clive Greensmith and shaped by intensive training at Suntory Hall’s Chamber Music Academy—an artistic inheritance they honor with rare insight, refinement, and fire.
Yarlung Producer & Recording Engineer Bob Attiyeh tells us: “For a producer, picking a favorite recording is like picking a favorite child: each one is so special and becomes a part of you. And yet, there are amazing memories that set each apart. The young musicians of Quartet Integra (Kyoka Misawa and Rintaro Kikuno on violins, Itsuki Yamamoto on viola, and cellist Ye Un Park) exhibit a professionalism far beyond their age, but once they take their places, the dynamism is only surpassed by their flawless ensemble. Each voice is distinct but is locked in perfect symmetry with its companions. They were an ABSOLUTE joy to work with!
For those familiar with Yarlung’s raison d’être, a goal has not only been to provide extraordinary young musicians with a professional audio “calling card” for their portfolio, but also to showcase exciting new work especially composed for them. One of our long-term partners in this project is Yarlung’s board member Donna Morton and our friends at Coretet Commissioning Project who commissioned David S. Lefkowitz to write a piece for Quartet Integra.
Using excerpts from Claudio Monteverdi’s “Orfeo” as inspiration, David wrote a work that explores the very nature of what it means to be a string quartet. And he experiments with the genre, pushes boundaries, and incorporates his own despair witnessing the burning of much of Los Angeles in the spring of 2025. David and his wife Laurie could see flames and smoke not too far away from their home as he composed this work.”
Quartet Integra
Kyoka Misawa, Violin
Rintaro Kikuno, Violin
Itsuki Yamamoto, Viola
Ye Un Park, Cello
Tracklist
Please note that the below previews are loaded as 44.1 kHz / 16 bit.Total time: 00:59:57
Additional information
| Label | |
|---|---|
| SKU | YAR40724620DSD |
| Qualities | DSD 512 fs, DSD 256 fs, DSD 128 fs, DSD 64 fs, DXD 32 Bit, DXD 24 Bit, FLAC 192 kHz, FLAC 96 kHz |
| Channels | 2ch Stereo, 5 Channel Surround Sound, 2ch Stereo & 5ch Surround |
| Artists | |
| Composers | |
| Genres | |
| Original Recording Format | |
| Recording Engineer | Arian Jansen, Bob Attiyeh |
| Recording Location | Zipper Hall at The Colburn School, Los Angeles |
| Instruments | |
| Executive Producer | Russell Ward |
| Mastering | Arian Jansen, Bob Attiyeh, Steve Hoffman |
| DSD Mastering | Tom Caulfield |
| Release Date | November 21, 2025 |
Press reviews
Positive Feedback
Whenever I get to hear something that is so supremely good, and so delightfully performed, with such insight and richness, I feel it warrants a immediate sharing with you. This new Yarlung Records Pure DSD 256 album, released today, is such a recording. Can you tell I’m excited about it? Yes, indeed! You need to hear this.
Kyoka Misawa and Rintaro Kikuno on violins, Itsuki Yamamoto on viola, and cellist Ye Un Park—bring astonishing versatility and depth to these performances. The album opens with Beethoven’s final String Quartet No. 16 in F Major Op 135, premiered after the composer’s death, and continues with a captivating performance of Ligeti’s ground breaking 1968 String Quartet No. 2, an explosive yet unexpectedly beautiful work. The program concludes with David S. Lefkowitz’s Green Mountains, Now Black, a richly layered new work composed in 2025 in response to the composer’s emotional response to the 2025 Los Angeles fires.
As you can see in the photos from the recording session above, only a single stereo microphone was used to make this recording, Ted Ancona’s AKG C24 microphone previously owned by Frank Sinatra, and Yarlung Audio vacuum tube microphone amplification designed and built by Elliot Midwood.
The image is as rock-solid as anything you will ever hear. And that superb focus of sound created a recording that is very special. The sound is vibrant, direct, absolutely transparent, with superb detail resolution and sound stage imaging. As always, no compression was applied. It is, altogether, a remarkable recording of a set of outstanding performances.
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