Search - Ferneyhough, Arditti String Quartet, Asko Ens :: 4th String Quartet

Trancending the realms of given genres

scarecrow | Chicago, Illinois United States | 08/05/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"A fascinating dimension of Ferneyhough's creativity is his ongoing dialogue with the established genres of the past. Some may refer to this as a negative feature of modernity forever mortgaged to the past however modernity has been a difficult realm to define, and as Derrida might inform us modernity has been a difficult realm to define that its departure is not necessarily positive or may not have been indeed progressive, that ancient rites lurk to inform the present. This Fourth Quartet is a situation similar to reverence for the already created it was written within the sight of Schoenberg's Second Quartet where the inclusion of a solo soprano voice seemed to be what the implications the music demanded. Here as well Ferneyhough finds a severe,vigorous,yet playful agenda with a text from Jackson Maclow. This text is a mesotic, a rendering of a text by Ezra Pound,something John Cage(a close creative associate of Maclow at one time) had indulged in. The vocalist Brenda Mitchell is quite wonderful with a playful demeanor as well, with an incredible vocal expressive realm here deployed, from child-like babblings in Italian, to declamatory singing almost with the scope of a concert aria. Ferneyhough seems to coerce his materials here to transcend toward a largescale concert aria.Kurze Schatten was inspired by Walter Benjamin long an important icon within Ferneyhough's creativity dating back to his first readings of Benjamin's essay on Baroque German tragic literature. Here the guitar, with two strings tuned differently creates a multi-surfaced affair with generous amounts of harmonics and percussive moments. It has a heavenly dimension. Terrain summons the ghost of Edgar Varese's Octandre, a groundbreaking work of modest dimensions yet rich in structural and timbral implications, something Ferneyhough found a wealth of internal renderings of chords,mini-chords to create a spatial dimension. This then is the template to introduce the virtuosity of the violin framed somewhat as a concertante. Irving Arditti is master at this music, yet he does maintain an emotive reserve,as if he is retraining himself as a tyrannical uncompromising conduit for the work's unrelenting argument. Scondanibbio as well is a premiere virtuoso contrabassist, he also plays cello literature. This is a fine solo,with again Ferneyhough penchant for transcending the boundaries of the given genre."

Ferneyhough, great modern master

Oscar | Bogotá, Colombia | 02/16/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Auvidis Montaigne label has one of the best collection of contemporary music and this by Ferneyhough is really incredible. First of all, the great quality and clean technique of performers is an important element to choose this disc (Magnus Andersson, Irvine Arditti and Stefano Scodanibbio are well known names in modern art music performing). Second, the works chosen for this CD could be one of the most interesting material in Ferneyhough career (with "Carceri d'Invenzione" and the infamous "Cassandra's Dream Song", not included in this disc). And finally, my favorite Ferneyhough work, titled "Trittico per G.S" maybe his most complete work. If you see the beauty score of this work, you will love it. If you listen to it,you will never leave it."