Tag: Kronos Quartet

CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?, Minimalism

Mivos Quartet Plays Steve Reich (CD Review)

Steve Reich: The String Quartets

Mivos Quartet

Deutsche Grammophon

 

Steve Reich wrote his three string quartets for the Kronos Quartet, who have premiered, recorded (for Nonesuch), and continued to champion them. With Kronos still active, why does another quartet record these pieces? Mivos Quartet makes a strong case that there is room for other interpretations of Reich’s string quartets.

 

I remember well being at the Carnegie Hall premiere of Steve Reich’s piece for string quartet and multimedia WTC 9/11, performed by Kronos Quartet. Its incorporation of sound recordings, a dead phone line, air traffic controllers, and those trying to escape the building, was harrowing. Like his first quartet, Different Trains, Reich creates instrumental motives out of spoken word passages, imitating their contour and imparting pitch. The final movement, in which Jewish prayers are said over remains from the site, is extraordinarily moving. By the end of the work, many in the audience were visibly shaken by its visceral impact. Kronos has since recorded WTC 9/11, in a gritty rendition reminiscent of the energy of the live performance. 

 

Mivos plays with equal poignancy, but also with  a laser beam clarity that brings an entirely different palette of textures to bear. The recorded voices too have been remastered to emphasize incisiveness of utterance. Even with the constraints of overdubbing and vocal samples, there is freshness to Mivos’s approach to phrasing, taut and lithe. 

 

Triple Quartet features three quartets overdubbed throughout the piece (no vocal samples). Mivos play up the polyrhythms that festoon the work. Just when you think the groove is interlocked for good, Reich throws another intricate rhythmic relationship into the mix. Lest things become too motoric, glissandos and solo turns enliven the texture. Triple Quartet doesn’t have the narrative arc that defines the other pieces here, but it is a fine piece of abstract music 

 

Different Trains is an iconic work. At the beginning of the Second World War, Reich was shuttled back and forth on trains between separated parents. The “different trains” are those destined for the death camps in Poland. Its first movement features voices from Reich’s train rides, a porter, and governess, and clangorous train sounds. As in WTC 9/11,  Reich creates melodic phrases that mimic the contours of the sampled speeches. The second movement is terrifying, with speakers who are survivors of the Holocaust describing their trips on trains to the death camps. Air raid sirens are added to the train sounds, which move on a different polyrhythmic pathway. The final movement describes the end of the Second World War, bringing voices from America and Europe together to consider what has transpired. The last section moves from the emphasis on rhythm to a major key cadence accompanying the description of a deportee with a beautiful voice. One of the masterpieces of the late twentieth century, Different Trains is a piece that delves into issues of ethnicity and religious persecution that are, sadly, all too present in today’s society.  

 

The renditions by Kronos are irreplaceable, but Mivos creates compelling complementary readings. Recommended.

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Opera

Kronos Quartet – Mỹ Lai (CD Review)

Mỹ Lai

Kronos Quartet

Smithsonian Folkways

 

In one of its most ambitious projects to date, Kronos Quartet has recorded Mỹ Lai, an opera by composer Jonathan Berger (Professor at Stanford University) and librettist Harriet Scott Chessman, who has also written a libretto for Georg Friedrich Haas’s next opera. Vocalist Rinde Eckerdt and multi-instrumentalist Vân-Ánh Vanessa Vo ̃ joined Kronos to create an East/West musical hybrid, with t’rưng, đàn bầu, and đàn tranh, traditional Vietnamese instruments, being added to the string quartet instrumentation.

 

The story of Mỹ Lai is one of brutality against civilians, over 500 killed by the U.S. Army in one village, and of an officer who sought to stem the massacre. Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson put his helicopter between the miscreant soldiers and noncombatants, to little avail. Later he refused to remain silent about the massacre, leaving him a pariah for much of his life. Today, we see the bombing of civilians in Ukraine and call it what it is, a war crime. During the post-Vietnam era, there was tremendous conflict about whether the United States was justified for its involvement in the war.  Mỹ Lai came to be exhibit A for those who felt that war crimes were never justifiable and that there had been a significant amount of atrocities committed by the Americans.

 

It is a truly operatic subject, and Berger integrates the various musical forces to heighten the dramatic tension inherent in the story. The string quartet is provided with post-minimal figurations that reminds one of their works with Steve Reich. The strings often break off into plaintive counterpoint. Most compelling are the interludes in which Kronos and Vo ̃ play together, integrating their two technical backgrounds into fascinating textural combinations. It is worth noting that the quartet bridges the gap from West to East. Their considerable experience playing non-Western music is displayed in their keen deployment of sliding tones and strummed passages.

 

Eckerdt’s performance is captivating, with stalwart reportage of the events unfolding, aching high notes in passages exhorting his fellow soldiers to stop the massacre, and sensitive piano singing in reflective sections. The addition of spoken word footage supports the narrative and adds another multimedia component to the piece.

 

Four decades on, collective memory is fading about the controversy over atrocities in the Vietnam conflict. Art can serve as a reminder, an exhortation not to forget lives lost and brutality enacted. Berger and Chessman have created an opera that speaks as much to today as it is a valuable history lesson. Once again, Kronos has taken on a piece with great resonance for our society.

 

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Recordings

Kronos Plays Folk Songs

Kronos Quartet, with Sam Amidon, Olivia Chaney, Rhiannon Giddens, and Natalie Merchant

Folk Songs

Nonesuch CD

 

From its earliest recordings, which included transcriptions of jazz, Kronos Quartet has cast their net wide. The group’s repertoire encompasses music from the world over and from numerous composers in a variety of styles. To remind myself of Kronos’ earlier days, I put on their “Landmark Sessions” recordings of Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans. And what a reminder it was, pointing up the fluid nature of the quartet’s ability to shift tone and rhythmic feel to accommodate nearly whatever they approach.

 

On Folk Songs, their latest CD for Nonesuch, Kronos are joined by an all-star cast of vocalists – Sam Amidon, Olivia Chaney, Rhiannon Giddens, and Natalie Merchant – in a collection of American folksongs from various traditions.  The arrangements – skilfully wrought by Nico Muhly, Donnacha Dennehy, Jacob Garchik, and Gabriel Witcher – deploy the skills sets of the guests, including instrumental contributions, Amidon’s guitar and Chaney’s harmonium and percussion, to good effect. The aforementioned fluidity of the quartet affects the way that they serve as collaborators in the various selections. Amidon’s neo-folk adoption of Appalachia is well-served by fiddle tune melodies and straight tone chords. Merchant’s soulful voice is matched by chocolatey timbres and poignant phrasing. Frequent Kronos collaborator Dennehy’s contribution, an arrangement of the traditional Irish song “Ramblin’ Boy,” is an ideal vehicle for the supple singing and exuberant playing of Chaney. An arrangement by Garchik of Delta Blues vocalist Geeshie Wiley’s “Last Kind Words” is a suave and winning instrumental interlude. Giddens is a marvel, her beautiful singing winsomely swinging in two originals inspired by traditional blues: “Factory Girl” and “Lullaby.” While Kronos is currently busy with a multi-year commissioning project (titled “Fifty for the Future”), such thoughtful music-making in an entirely different vein is most welcome.

 

by Christian Carey
Chamber Music, Commissions, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, New York

Kronos at Carnegie Hall

KRONOS QUARTET
Photo: Steve J. Sherman

Kronos Quartet

Carnegie Hall – Zankel Hall

Saturday, February 11, 2017

Christian Carey

Six Things to Like About Kronos at Carnegie Hall

  1. Fifty for the Future Commissioning Project — Kronos used Saturday February 11th’s concert to showcase some of the early entries in their “Fifty for the Future” project. Not only is Kronos recording all of the pieces for young quartets to hear; their website also includes free to download PDFs of scores and parts. Thus, they are creating a new repertory for quartets eager to learn about contemporary music.
  2. Garth Knox — Some of the pieces, such as renowned violist Garth Knox’s “Dimensions” from Satellites, take on a didactic function. Knox features all manner of bowing techniques, including the surprisingly potent hissing sound of “air bowing.” It is a piece that is a catalog of special effects, but they are organically incorporated and the music is a brisk tour: it doesn’t overstay its welcome and stretch one’s appreciation of its charms.
  3. Malian percussionist Fode Lassana Diabate’s Sundata’s Time: The master balafonist joined Kronos onstage for the first completed “Fifty For the Future” composition: Sundata’s Time. Each movement spotlighted a different instrument, along with a few extra cadenzas for balafon thrown in. These were most welcome. Diabate plays with an extraordinary grace and fluidity that not only was stirring in its own right, but brought out a different character entirely in Kronos’s playing. It was a most simpatico collaboration.
  4. Kala Ramnath’s Amrit contains major scale ragas that craft a poignantly stirring work combining Eastern and Western gestures in a bold attempt to bring the two hemispheres’s musical traditions together.
  5. Rhiannon Giddens’s At the Purchaser’s Option brought blues and roots music to the fore, genres that Kronos has played eloquently since their inception. Perhaps the most attractive piece on the program in terms of musical surface, its message went deeper, serving as a sober reminder of slave trade in 19th Century America. Giddens has a new Nonesuch CD out this coming Friday, titled Freedom Highway.
  6. If Giddens’s piece was the most attractive on a surface level, Steve Reich’s Triple Quartet remained the weightiest in ambition and most thoroughly constructed of the programmed works. Written for Kronos, it features two virtual quartets on tape that accompany the live musicians (Kay and I are lobbying for more live performances of all three quartets, as that would really be something!). Overlapping ostinatos and stabbing melodic gestures provide a serious demeanor that resembles another piece played by Kronos with tape (of human voices): Different Trains. The rhythmic contours and syncopations provide ample amounts of challenges, but Kronos played seamlessly with the avatar-filled tape part. While “Fifty for the Future” is an important mission for Kronos, it is also heartening to hear some of their older repertoire being revived. The encore for the concert: an arrangement of “Strange Fruit,” the jazz protest song made famous by Billie Holiday.

rhiannon-giddens-freedom-highway

by Christian Carey
Birthdays, File Under?, Minimalism

Terry Riley is 80

Happy birthday to composer Terry Riley, who turns 80 today.

There are CD releases out this week to celebrate the composer. My assessment of ZOFO Plays Terry Riley appears in the CD Reviews section of Sequenza 21 and on my blog.

But wait, there’s more.

Nonesuch Records has done right by Riley. They have released One Earth, One People, One Love, a 5-CD boxed set of the complete recordings of Riley’s music composed for Kronos Quartet. The set contains a disc of unreleased tracks, Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector: Music of Terry Riley. For those of you yelling – “No fair! I already have the Kronos discs. I want to buy the unreleased recordings as a separate CD!” – Nonesuch is allowing you to do just that, separately releasing these recordings on a single disc.

Once again, happiest of birthdays Mr. Riley! May you continue to write the eloquently beautiful music we have come to know and love for many years to come.

 

by Christian Carey