American Quartet

Anthony McGill, New York Philharmonic principal clarinet and 2020 Avery Fisher Prize winner, and the multiple Grammy Award-winning Pacifica Quartet present an album illuminating experiences that have shaped America through works by Richard Danielpour, James Lee III, Ben Shirley (all three world-premiere recordings), and Valerie Coleman. McGill describes it as a project driven by the desire to “expand the capacity for art and music to change the world.”

It was an imaginative idea to flank Dvorak's Czech-flavoured, turn-of-the-century view of the American outdoors with a pair of twentieth-century American quartets—the one, a passionate essay in musical dialogue, the other, a fairly radical study in proto-minimalism. There's an additional 'theme' in that Dvorak nourished his F major Quartet with 'American Indian-style' tunes and Glass flavoured his Quartet No. 1 with suggestions of Asian Indian music (for example, pizzicato cello glissandos)…I enjoyed it a great deal and felt that the Duke Quartet enjoyed it too. The Barber Quartet has the now highly popular Adagio at its core, yet its restless, rather Ivesian outer movements are hardly less attractive. Listening to it after the Dvorak highlights an honesty, sincerity and melodic sense common to both works, although Dvorak's easy tunefulness and breezy structure bespeak extra experience and a far more distinctive style. The Duke Quartet's performances are pert and lively…the Glass isn't otherwise available (at least not in this country) and its present programming context makes for a most engaging hour's listening.

Along with Leos Janacek, Bohuslav Martinu was one of the twin giants of Czech music in the twentieth century, a composer with a distinctly individual voice and a versatility that led him to excel in every medium from stage works to symphonies to string quartets. Martinu was born in the Moravian town of Policka. Starting violin lessons at the of seven, he gave his first recital when he was 15. By the age of 10 he had written his first compositions; his juvenilia include songs, piano music, symphonic poems, string quartets, and ballets. In 1906, he entered Prague Conservatory, but reading and the theater diverted Martinu from his studies, and he was finally expelled for "incorrigible negligence" in 1910. However, he continued composing. Exempted, as a …….
From Allmusic

The Lark Quartet brings its stellar 34 year career to a close with this celebratory album. On it, the Lark Quartet offers premiere recordings of works by John Harbison, Kenji Bunch, Anna Weesner and Andrew Waggoner, all composed for this occasion. Assisting Lark Quartet are Yousif Sheronick, percussion (Bunch), Romie de Guise-Langlois, clarinet (Weesner) and the Lark's four founding members (Waggoner).