Tag: String Quartet

CD Review, Chamber Music, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?

Attacca Quartet – Real Life (CD Review)

Attacca Quartet

Real Life

Sony Music CD/DL

 

Kronos Quartet excepted, there have been a lot of really bad arrangements of pop music for string quartet. Part of the problem is that the arrangers of these covers attempt to translate a medium that involves amplification, electronics, and a flexible sense of rhythm into straight notation for acoustic ensemble. Attacca Quartet’s Real Life, on the other hand, sees the opportunity for collaboration in electronic music covers. 

 

Their recordings are subjected to production from some of the top electronic musicians in the industry: Tokimonsta, Squarepusher, and Daedelus among them. The songs are by the artists Flying Lotus (“Remind U” is a particular standout), Louis Cole, Anne Müller, and Mid-Air Thief. The title track, by Cole, features propulsive beats that are offset by chordal strings and the song’s melody doubled in octaves. After a fragmentary opening, Mid-air Thief’s “Why” is populated with reverberant crescendos. Pizzicatos, drumset, and quirky harmonies give Squarepusher’s “Xetaka 1” a fascinating, off-kilter feel, like Bartôk in a blender. 

 

At thirty-five minutes, the recording doesn’t overstay its welcome, with several of the selections truncated from their original versions. A welcome exception is “Drifting Circles” by Anne Müller, in which minimal ostinatos adorn the song’s sumptuous chord progression and evolving textures are explored. Cole’s “More Love Less Hate” provides an aphoristic, supple coda to the proceedings. 

 

  • Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CDs, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Los Angeles

Daniel Corral: “Refractions” (Populist Records)

Refractions

Daniel Corral

Populist Records CD PR012

Jeremy Kerner, electric guitar; Isaura String Quartet; Corral, music box and laptop

LA-based Populist Records has released another treasure trove of unusual ambience. Daniel Corral’s Refractions, featuring the composer on music box laptop alongside electric guitarist Jeremy Kerner and the Isaura String Quartet, captures a compelling ambient composition. Delicate strains from guitar and strings are offset by bell-like interjections from Corral’s music box and swaths of sustained sounds from his laptop. The piece begins with all of these various textures and gradually is winnowed down to the music box, supplying minimal punctuations and offset repetitions in a slow ritardando until the piece’s delicate denouement and eventual close. Given the deliberate limitation of resources and lassitude of pacing, this slowly evolving piece of music is spellbinding in its execution. Rather than foregrounding the incremental shifts of material, the listener is encouraged to bask in a wash of sounds, varied and lovely timbres that are deployed with enough independence to seem to have minds of their own.

Save

by Christian Carey
CDs, Composers, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

James Matheson on Yarlung

James Matheson

Violin Concerto, String Quartet, Time Alone
Baird Dodge, violin; Chicago Symphony, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen;

Color Field Quartet

Laura Strickling, soprano; Thomas Sauer, piano

Yarlung Records

On his latest CD for Yarlung, composer James Matheson presents strong essays in both the concerto and string quartet genres. His String Quartet, played in vibrant fashion by Color Field Quartet, is filled with overlapping scales and glissandos, post-minimal ostinatos, and impressionist harmonic colors. Thus, it presents as a postmodern response both to composers such as Ravel and Debussy and more recent figures such as John Adams and Aaron Jay Kernis.

There is a similar variety of instrumental color in Matheson’s violin concerto. Its conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, is described in the liner notes as a great champion of the piece, helping to arrange for its recording (a live tape of the Chicago Symphony). The muscularly motoric violin part, played here by Baird Dodge, is formidable. The violin soloist is required to execute limpid runs clear up into the stratosphere of the instrument’s compass. In addition to its impressive solo part, the concerto’s orchestration has a cinematic sweep that is most engaging. The second movement, Chaconne, features a gradual build by the soloist, with the part starting down near rumbling cellos and basses and concluding within striking distance of high flutes (which seem to mimic gestures from movement one in slow motion). The concerto concludes with Dance, a moto perpetuo in which the violinist faces off with a boisterous orchestra (which ends on the supertonic!).

The songs are idiomatically set, but I was left wishing for a less diffident performance than the one provided here. They were written for Kiera Duffy; perhaps we can hope that she gives them a hearing soon.

Matheson’s musical language is appealing in its variety. He is also a creative orchestrator, parsing multiple threads of activity yet always providing music with a clear surface.

by Christian Carey
Austin, Cello, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Houston, Strings

Grandchildren of Minimalism: The Miró Quartet’s Joshua Gindele On Playing Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 5

(The Miró Quartet)

(Houston, TX) As a way of acknowledging the impact composers such as Terry Riley, Meredith Monk, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass made on him in his formative years, composer John Zorn has described himself as a “child of minimalism” and said that the influence of the minimalist school “is somewhere in almost everything I do.”

Cellist Joshua Gindele, a founding member of the Austin-based Miró Quartet, probably wouldn’t describe himself as a child or even a grandchild of minimalism, since Glass’s repertoire, as well as the repertoire of several of the composers we’ve come to associate with the “M” word, has since found a home among the standards that any self-respecting classical chamber ensemble plays. Along with performing traditional string quartet music, including works by Beethoven, Brahms, and Schubert, the Miró Quartet has commissioned and performed several new works by composers, including Brent Michael Davids, Chan Ka Nin, Leonardo Balada, and Gunter Schuller. On Tuesday, September 17, 7:30 PM at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, the Quartet performs a program of works by Schubert and Beethoven as well as Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 5.

Although Glass is still finding ways to surprise listeners and reboot the very musical language he began articulating back in 1966 with  (more…)

by Chris Becker
Brooklyn, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers Now, Concerts, Contemporary Classical

Fairouz, Borromeo, and More

Young composer Mohammed Fairouz is not fooling around. Recently hailed by BBC World News as “one of the most talented composers of his generation,” his music melds Middle-Eastern modes and Western structures. A concert on Thursday evening will center around Fairouz’s compositional output. It is being presented by the Issue Project Room at Our Lady of Lebanon Cathedral and will feature pianists Kathleen Supové, Blair McMillen, and Taka Kigawa, mezzo-soprano Blythe Gaissert, soprano Elizabeth Farnum, the Cygnus Ensemble, and the Borromeo String Quartet in their only New York appearance this season.

This concert will include the New York premiere of Fairouz’s The Named Angels, a new 28-minute work in four movements. The Borromeo String Quartet will be performing this premiere. About this piece, Fairouz says, “The Named Angels refers to those angels that are named and recognized in the Islamic, Christian and Jewish traditions: Michael, Israfel, Gabriel and Azrael. Each of the four movements represents a character portrait of a specific Angel.”

The concert is presented by Issue Project Room at Our Lady of Lebanon Cathedral at 113 Remsen Street in Downtown Brooklyn, just a few blocks from IPR. Tickets are $30, $25 for members and students, available at Issue Project Room’s website.

by Jonathan Lakeland
Chamber Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, File Under?, Los Angeles, Strings, Video

LA X(enakis)



JACK Quartet presents two concerts in LA this coming Sunday and Monday. On 2/13, they’re giving an afternoon concert for the Da Camera Society (tickets/details here) at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. The program includes early music – Machaut and Gesualdo – as well as contemporary works: Philip Glass’ 5th Quartet and Tetras by Iannis Xenakis. The selections certainly suit the concert’s location: both Xenakis and Machaut are composers who should be of interest to architects!

On Monday, JACK will present a different program as part of Monday Evening Concerts at the Colburn School (tickets/details here). It includes both of Aaron Cassidy’s quartets, John Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts, Anton Webern’s Op. 9 Bagatelles, and Horaţiu Rădulescu’s String Quartet No. 5 “before the universe was born.”

This looks to be an amazing double header of new music programs. I hope that some of our Californian readers will be able to attend. If so, please send us a report.

Tim Rutherford-Johnson has an excellent post about Aaron Cassidy’s 2nd Quartet on New Music Box today.

As Tim pointed out on his blog, Paul Griffiths’ notes for the 2/14 program are online.

Here’s a taste of Tetras:

by Christian Carey