Lachenmann String Quartets

Helmut Lachenmann was honoured for his life’s work with the Golden Lion at the 2008 Biennale. Listening to Lachenmann’s string quartets, we sense how their aural landscape turns from a ‘field of rubble’ into a ‘field of tension’ – how scrapings, draggings, scratchings and rustlings can fulfill the promise of ‘a new beauty’ by avoiding the habitual.

Helmut Lachenmann was honoured for his life’s work with the Golden Lion at the 2008 Biennale. Listening to Lachenmann’s string quartets, we sense how their aural landscape turns from a ‘field of rubble’ into a ‘field of tension’ – how scrapings, draggings, scratchings and rustlings can fulfill the promise of ‘a new beauty’ by avoiding the habitual.

“The three quartets provide a commentary on each other and the time in which they were composed. Gran Torso has something of an investigation about it, of a broaching, of forays into critical new land. Reigen designates the sounds and techniques of two very different regions. Grido gains a new expressiveness– the land of music is freely praised and celebrated, although never without reflexive refraction or arousing disturbance. In the Choral at the end comes a sharp crack, a bark, before the music collapses.”

Martin Kaltenecker

Toshio Hosokawa - Silent Flowers - String Quartets (2013) {WERGO WER 6761 2, Arditti Quartet}
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© 2013 WERGO / Schott Music | WER 6761 2
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Modern Classical / Chamber Music

The quartets of Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa presented here bring to mind a fusion of Western avant-garde textures and extended instrumental techniques with traditional Japanese aesthetics. It's an immensely absorbing combination, and his music appears to have evolved over the years in a more Japanese direction while not losing any of its innovative qualities. Consider the opening work, Blossoming, which true to its name depicts the blossoming of a flower. It sounds like a hackneyed concept, but the realization here is striking: the action unfolds over nearly 14 minutes coalescing out of silence and then a panoply of minute details.

The Minguett Quartet recorded nearly the full cycle of Wolfgang Rihm's string quartets for Collegno, and it's a shame these discs are now out of print. The Minguett Quartet are Ulrich Isfort and Annette Reisinger (violins), Aroa Sorin (viola) and Matthias Diener (cello). On this volume of the cycle, we find three quartets from the 1990s and early millennium, a time when Rihm returned to the effusive expressionism that had first made him famous, after a few years of wispy, piannissimo music imitative of Nono and Lachenmann…….

Christopher Culver @ Amazon.com

The Chaos String Quartet, named BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist for 2023-2025, was founded in 2019 based on the principles of chaos in art, science and philosophy. Having won such prestigious international competitions as ARD (2022), Bordeaux (2022), Bad Tölz (2023) and Haydn (2023), the ensemble is rapidly gaining prominence on the international stage, most notably performing at the Musikverein Vienna, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Wigmore Hall, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Bozar (Brussels) and Philharmonie de Paris.

This ambitious and beautifully produced two-CD set includes nearly all of Iannis Xenakis' chamber music for strings, piano, and strings and piano combined. Chamber music constituted a small part of the composer's output, since large ensembles and large forms were vehicles more commensurate with the aesthetic of his monumental, granitic music. There are no small pieces here, though; in each of these works, ranging from solos to a quintet for piano and strings, Xenakis was able to express his uncompromising vision no less ferociously than in his orchestral works. While all of the pieces have an elemental character, many with a visceral punch, the actual sound of the music is surprisingly varied, and the individual works have distinctive and individual characters. In spite of the weightiness and rigor of the music, the tone is not necessarily heavy, and some pieces, like Evryali for piano and Dikhthas for violin and piano, have moments of what could almost be described as whimsicality.