SKU: HL.49046141
ISBN 9790001167673. UPC: 841886033702. 0.324 inches.
After the Toccata for piano and string quintet from 1989, the quartet for oboe, violin, viola and piano from 2010 and the piano quintet from 2014, Olli Mustonen has now presented his first work contribution for the tradition-rich pure string quartet occupation. The four-movement quartet ties in with the historical lines of the genre since Classicism and Romanticism and transmits them into a contemporary musical language. Virtuously, the concluding sentence ends in an ecstatic Con fuoco all'Ungharese.
SKU: MN.20-956
UPC: 688670209567.
This is a welcome addition to the limited repertoire for String Quartet and Organ. In 6+ minutes the work presents all five instruments with solo opportunities. The playful mood of the piece is contrasted by the lyrical romanticism of its quieter moments.
SKU: HL.49019413
ISBN 9790001176477. UPC: 841886016729.
The composer Johanna Senfter (1879 1961) from Oppenheim concerned herself with chamber music for strings all her life, even studied violin in Frankfurt herself. Max Reger then gave her lessons in Leipzig, first privately, then in his composition class at the conservatoire and valued her 'extraordinary compositional talent'. The strict teacher more and more became a committed promoter of the works by Johanna Senfter. For a period of 50 years, the composer concerned herself with the string quartet genre, from Quartet No. 1 in D minor Op. 4, composed shortly after the turn of the century, to the sixth and last Quartet in C minor Op. 115 which was performed for the first time in 1960, one year before her death. The Quartet in F sharp minor Op. 28 is her second quartet which was premiered in Darmstadt on 5 November 1922. In this work, as in later works, Senfter combined traditional form models - here Baroque movements like gavotte, saraband, gigue - with expressive, late Romantic musical language. The work, consisting of six short movements, may without doubt be regarded as a valuable addition to the quartet repertoire.
SKU: PR.114414250
UPC: 680160607846.
Lowell Liebermann's 4th String Quartet was commissioned by the Canandaigua Lake Chamber Music Festival and the Wood Library, Canandaigua, NY, for the Orion Quartet in celebration of their 20th Anniversary. The quartet was premiered by the Orions at the Canandaigua Lake Chamber Music Festival in Rochester, NY on February 9th, 2008. To quote the writer Mark Greenberg: It's a remarkable piece. The mood is elegiacal and meditative, the melodic lines sinuous and searching, the harmonies rich and astonishingly beautiful. Liebermann works within the traditions of Western tonality, but that is a mansion with many rooms. Liebermann inhabits all of them as his expressive purposes require, and he doesn't mind knocking down a wall to create new harmonic spaces. The Fourth Quartet doesn't exactly fit the neoromantic niche into which Liebermann is sometimes placed. Much of the music, especially near the beginning, is a highly advanced and fluid chromatic expressionism with modernist tendencies. Sometimes this roiling cloudscape breaks open to allow a patch of near-classical harmony and almost-resolution. Near the midpoint the clouds lift in leaping modulations. Several chordal passages recall Russian Orthodox chant. Suddenly, when you've begun to think the somber, deliberate pace has gone on a bit too long, Liebermann introduces a kind of hobbled, stilted jazz idiom. The piece dies in pensive quiet.
