Contemporary works for string quartet
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Robert Moran, Michael Torke, David Byrne, John Lurie
Label: Argo
Magazine Review Date: 3/1993
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 52
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 436 565-2ZH
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
High Life for nine instruments |
David Byrne, Composer
Balanescu Qt David Byrne, Composer |
Music from the Towers of the Moon |
Robert Moran, Composer
Balanescu Qt Robert Moran, Composer |
Stranger then Paradise |
John Lurie, Composer
Balanescu Qt John Lurie, Composer |
Chalk |
Michael Torke, Composer
Balanescu Qt Michael Torke, Composer |
Author:
This record blows further dust off a hallowed and time-honoured medium. Unlike most other European string quartets, the Balanescu Quartet have been out making friends with American musicians from offbeat walks of life, and have come home with a neat recital of pieces that is anything but stiffly starched. David Byrne has given them an extraordinary hybrid of a piece, part American, part African, part pop, part minimalist, properly for an ensemble of nine players, and achieved here only by overdubbing. With John Lurie the Balanescus move into the pastel shades of the blues, further softened by the quartet's sonority but still recognizably from the root-stock of jazz. From Robert Moran, a man whose stylistic direction has never been easy to predict, they have acquired a study in what might be termed the new naiviety: Satie in 1990s velvet, or Michael Nyman purged of all (intentional) banality. Closest in texture to the normal fodder of string quartets is Michael Torke's Chalk, but even this is really a piece for the young at heart.
Heterodox the pieces may be but together they make a recital that's surprisingiy and delightfully integrated. All the music is euphonious, but little of it walks firmly down the old road of tonality; only Moran's Music from the Towers of the Moon sets foot in that direction, and evn then in typical post-modern fashion—looking on tonality from outside, as it were. Byrne and Lurie, who come up with the most haunting and memorable moments on the record, work freely with pedal-notes and ostinatos, over which they float shards of melody, enigmatic and highly scented. Set beside their laid-back, handsome good looks, Torke's quartet seems busy and a bit too smartly dressed. It also upstages the suites of miniatures that precedes it, running to 16 minutes of unbroken, tightly-integrated music mostly in a spiritedmoderato. Here and in all the other pieces the Balanescu Quartet's playing is a delight. Bravo, Argo; one of your best yet.'
Heterodox the pieces may be but together they make a recital that's surprisingiy and delightfully integrated. All the music is euphonious, but little of it walks firmly down the old road of tonality; only Moran's Music from the Towers of the Moon sets foot in that direction, and evn then in typical post-modern fashion—looking on tonality from outside, as it were. Byrne and Lurie, who come up with the most haunting and memorable moments on the record, work freely with pedal-notes and ostinatos, over which they float shards of melody, enigmatic and highly scented. Set beside their laid-back, handsome good looks, Torke's quartet seems busy and a bit too smartly dressed. It also upstages the suites of miniatures that precedes it, running to 16 minutes of unbroken, tightly-integrated music mostly in a spirited
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