Parenthese

The members of Quatuor Ébène went round the world with the complete Beethoven quartets, now they go ‘Round Midnight. This album offers a creatively conceived programme, bringing together major figures from different streams of 20th music: Arnold Schönberg, Henri Dutilleux and four masters of jazz and popular idioms – Thelonius Monk, Cole Porter, Henry Mancini and Victor Young.

Fidèles à leur curiosité naturelle, les quatre instrumentistes du Quatuor Ébène réunissent sur leur dernier album deux chefs-d’œuvre nocturnes composés à chaque extrémité du XXe siècle, le quatuor Ainsi la nuit de Dutilleux et le sextuor à cordes Verklärte Nacht (« Nuit transfigurée ») de Schönberg. Ils ont eu l’idée géniale de créer un lien original entre les deux œuvres sous la forme d’un grand nocturne de onze pièces, Night Bridge, imaginé par eux et mis en partition par Raphaël Merlin, leur violoncelliste. « Palimpseste, réminiscences, ruptures, allusions, échos, développements, improvisations écrites, brouillage, polissage, étirements ou contraction…

If this premiere recording of Stephen Hough’s String Quartet No 1 may be regarded as definitive—the work is dedicated to the Takács Quartet—those of the quartets by Ravel and Dutilleux are no less distinguished.Dedicated ‘à mon cher maître Gabriel Fauré’, Maurice Ravel’s only string quartet was started in 1902. On 30 April that year he had attended the first performance of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and immediately afterwards set about preparing for the Prix de Rome—a prize he was fated never to win despite repeated attempts between 1900 and 1905. In the autumn he undertook a project for a fellow composer, Frederick Delius, who asked him to make a piano–vocal score of the opera Margot la Rouge. He then got to work on the String Quartet, and the first two movements were finished in December 1902, according to Ravel’s note on the last page of the second movement in the autograph score.

Among contemporary music ensembles, perhaps none is more ambitious or daring than the brilliant Arditti String Quartet, which presents three virtuosic modernist works on this Wigmore Hall Live release. The metric complexities of Conlon Nancarrow's short, etude-like "String Quartet No. 3" (1987) test the player's rhythmic precision and linear independence, while the ensemble's cohesion and balance are challenged in the 12 epigrammatic sections of Henri Dutilleux's "String Quartet, Ainsi la Nuit" (1973-1976). But while both of these works are undeniably impressive for the great difficulties they present, the tour de force of this recording is György Ligeti's enormously demanding "String Quartet No. 2" (1968), a masterpiece of extended string techniques and sonorities that is a bold continuation of the explorations of Béla Bartók; yet this work is an intense musical experience in its own right, for all the stark contrasts of material and fantastic experimentation. Listening to this disc in one sitting can be invigorating or exhausting, depending on one's experience and inclination toward avant-garde string quartet music; since the density of detail is high, there is a lot to absorb here, and all three string quartets require the sharpest attention. Yet the Arditti String Quartet is a superb guide to these uncompromising pieces, and the group's exuberance and phenomenal playing undoubtedly made this April 9, 2005, concert enjoyable for its audience. The reproduction is remarkably vibrant and almost palpable in its presence. (Blair Sanderson, All Music Guide)