Arditti 4

Hilda Paredes provides a family portrait on Cuerdas del destino, her latest CD. The works are written for violinist Irvine Arditti, her husband, countertenor Jake Arditti, her son, and the Arditti Quartet, with whom she has enjoyed more than twenty years of artistic partnership. This CD is also significant in that it celebrates the Arditti’s fortieth anniversary.

The German-French composer Mark Andre (b.1964) is one of the most important representatives of New Music. His twelve "Miniatures" for string quartet were composed in 2014/17 as a commission from the Arditti Quartet, Bavarian Radio's "musica viva", the Festival d'Automne à Paris and the ProQuartet-CEMC, funded by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. Andre created his organ work "Himmelfahrt" (Ascension), funded by the Siemens Music Foundation, in 2018 on behalf of the Evangelical Church in Germany. The orchestral work woher…wohin was written between 2015 and 2017 as a composition commission by BR's "musica viva" in conjunction with the Happy New Ears prize for composition from the Hans and Gertrud Zender Foundation. The live recordings of all three works are now being released in the CD edition of Bavarian Radio's "musica viva" concert series on BR-KLASSIK.

Matthias Pintscher - Figura I-V & Other Works - Teodoro Anzellotti, Arditti Quartet (2004) {Winter & Winter 910 097-2}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 306 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 188 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 189 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2004 Winter & Winter | 910 097-2
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Chamber Music

2004 marks the 30th Anniversary of the Arditti String Quartet, which once again demonstrates its commitment to the advancement of New Music–this time by the young German Matthias Pintscher (b. 1971). For the discerning listener of New Music, this disc offers both substance and style. Winter & Winter's packaging is exquisite and attractive (although I haven't figured out why the booklet offers nine blank pages followed by two pages of track and publisher information, when brief liner notes or at least some biographical information–especially in the case of a young composer–would be helpful not only in giving context to the works performed but also in establishing a base listenership).

Violinist Irvine Arditti, pianist Claude Helffer, and the Spectrum ensemble conducted by Guy Protheroe produce consummate performances of the Greek avant-gardist's unwieldy chamber music. If you're familiar with Xenakis's career you'll know he was trained in mathematics and enjoyed a successful career as an architect. Such background might prepare you for the music's preoccupation with line, volume, and form in an unusually abstract way, but it won't prepare you for its visceral, almost primitive power. On Akanthos, the singer Penelope Walmsley-Clark must cope with what is surely one of the most ridiculous soprano parts ever written.

Toshio Hosokawa - Silent Flowers - String Quartets (2013) {WERGO WER 6761 2, Arditti Quartet}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 295 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 182 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 108 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 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.

In his 90th year, Elliott Carter is doing something few nonagenarians ever do: he's premiering a striking new string quartet, his fifth. And it's an awe-inspiring piece. The Arditti String Quartet takes up the short phrases that run with and then against one another with sureness, plucking and scraping and making their bows sing. They then delve into each of the five interludes that interrogate the quartet's six sections and play through the disparate splinters of tone and flushes of midrange color as if they were perfectly logical developments. Which they're not.

From the introduction by Alessandra Carlotta Pellegrini, Scientific director Isabella Scelsi Foundation: “This double CD again makes it possible, after a long interval, to experience the pleasure of listening to the complete version of the string quartets by Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988) in the masterly interpretation by the Arditti Quartet, accompanied by two cornerstones of his production, Khoom and the Trio for strings. The CD was recorded shortly after the death of the Maestro and constitutes a precious witness for two series of reasons.