Search - Arditti String Quartet :: 5 Spanish Quartets

Cornocopia of Spain comtemporary strings

scarecrow | Chicago, Illinois United States | 02/03/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Usually contemporary composers of Spain strike a path to middle Europe to study composition, Boulez,Stockhausen, Nono, or Donatoni are usually sought after.

This is a wide spectrum of string music hitting the now establishment composers something Arditti laid the basis for a number of their recordings, like founding a beachhead for their skills as interpreters and promuligators of the establishment modern,as Carter,Henze,Xenakis,Birtwistle,Ferneyhough,Rihm,Stockhausen. They then extend their repertoire to students of relative composer power brokers, Here Cristobal Halffter,born 1924,held back for a while in a ubiquitous de Falla style until the fascist grip weakened lightly in the Fifties and then joined the avant-garde along Stravinskian dimensions. He is a man of the theatre and this work represents a search for an image, very classical in shape.

Latter Tomas Marco as well studied however with Boulez and Stockhausen has dabbled in differing musical languages,minimalism while working for Spain;'s radio apparatuses. He has four string quartets ranging in conceptual depth from #3 subtitled "anatomia fractal" to #4 subtitled "los desastres de la guerra". This one here is more on unknown demons, abandoned souls of Spain I imagine.It is well-compact,taut for 13 minutes,with no extraneous material,somewhat lamenting.

Luis de Pablo is here as well the "Generation of 1951" as they are known,is quite also a man of drama and the theatre, shuns focused abstractions in his work, more fascinated by the earthiness of timbre its primordial suggestions. Thes piece here reveals this with wonderful expressive lines atonal mixed blended and un-blended."