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.

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.

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.

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.

Konstantia Gourzi - Music for Piano and String Quartet (2014) {ECM New Series 2309}
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© ECM Records | ECM New Series 2309
Classical / Contemporary Classical

Athens-born and Munich-based composer Konstantia Gourzi makes her ECM New Series label debut. “What historical voices commingle in the current idiom of a composer whose cultural roots lie in the birthplace of rhetoric, but who emigrated to take a musical apprenticeship in European constructivism?” asks Ingrid Allwardt in the liner notes.

Founded by laureates from the Paris and Lyon conservatories, the Diotima Quartet takes its name from the work of Luigi Nono Fragmente-Stille, an Diotima, thus affirming its commitment to the music of its time. A privileged partner of many composers (Helmut Lachenmann, Pierre Boulez, Brian Ferneyhough, Toshio Hosokawa…), he regularly commissions new pieces from composers such as Alberto Posadas, Gérard Pesson, Emmanuel Nunes, James Dillon, Oskar Bianchi or Miroslav Srnka. However, the Quartet does not neglect the classical string quartet repertoire, paying particular attention to Beethoven's last quartets, French music and the repertoire of the early twentieth century.