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| Musik Fur Streichinstrumente | 
 enlarge | Creators: Gyorgy Kurtag, Keller Quartet
Label: Ecm Records
Category: Music
List Price: $17.98
Buy New: $11.07
You Save: $6.91 (38%)
Buy New/Used from $11.07
Avg. Customer Rating:  (8 reviews)
Sales Rank: 107636
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
MPN: 453258
UPC: 028945325828
EAN: 0028945325828
ASIN: B000024R1O
Release Date: February 1, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Tracks:
| • | Aus der Ferne III | | • | Officium breve in memoriam Andreae Szervanszky | | • | Ligatura - Message to Frences-Marie (The answered unanswered question) | | • | Quartetto per archi op.1 / I Poco agitato | | • | ' II Con moto | | • | ' III Vivacissimo; Lento | | • | ' IV Con spirito | | • | ' V Molto ostinato | | • | ' VI Adagio | | • | Hommage a Mihaly Andras: 12 Mikroludien / I | | • | ' II | | • | ' III | | • | ' IV Presto | | • | ' V Lontano, calmo, appena sentito | | • | ' VI | | • | ' VII | | • | ' VIII Con slancio | | • | ' IX Pesante, con moto / Leggiero | | • | ' X Molto agitato | | • | ' XI | | • | ' XII Leggiero, con moto, non dolce | | • | Ligatura - Message to Frances-Marie (The answered unanswered question) |
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Strong performances of Kurtag's string quartets November 8, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag (born 1926) famously bloomed late. After following the Communist party line in the 1950s, a trip to Paris at the end of that decade, where he encountered the international avant-garde and the psychologist Marianne Stein, made him repudiate everything he had written before. A series of remarkable works followed, but it wasn't under the early 1980s that he reached international attention.
Because Kurtag's opus number one was a String Quartet, this and his other string quartets are typical introductions to his music. These were my first encounter with Gyorgy Kurtag, and I liked what I heard very much, enough to go on to acquire quite a collection of his music. He is a composer whose works are as compressed as Webern's, but while Webern's tend to seem crystalline and smooth, Kurtag's string quartets are shadowy, pitted, and mysterious, like vaguely Bartok's nocturnal world. If you've never heard these before, just imagine Ligeti's second string quartet under enormous pressure.
The "Quartetto per archi" op. 1 (1959) was consists of six very short movements in arch structure, with the first serving as a spooky introduction to the quartet's harmonic soundworld and the sixth as epilogue, and the second and fifth both containing ostinatos. The middle two movements, with their references to Beethoven and Bartok, give a brief traditional shine. In the The Matchstick Man documentary, Kurtag explains that he sought a new music like the collection of odds and ends strewn around a workroom, and this seeking for historical synthesis is very evident.
Things get even briefer with Kurtag's next two string quartets. "Hommage a Mihaly Andras" (1977-78) is a set of twelve "microludes", the shortest of which is but twelve seconds long. It explores many genres, from chorales to folk-song melodies to even totally-serious jingles. "Officium breve in memoriam Andreae Szervanszky" (1988-89) continues this same exploration of many styles, but has a much more coherent dramatic curve. Appropriate for a work in memory of the composer who introduced Webern to Hungary, the piece contains quotations from Webern.
The disc is filled out by two other works for strings. "Aus der Ferne III" for string quartet was written for the 90th birthday of the music publisher Alfred Schlee. It seems a fairly minor work--indeed, it lacks an opus number--but its violins and viola moving expressively over a continual plucked C ("like a kettledrum") is entertaining enough. "Ligatura - Message to Frances-Marie" op. 31b for two cellos, two violins and celesta (1989) is quite unusual. It has a cello with two bows used simultaneously and the violins are distantly placed, and the celesta only enters in the last two measures (here it is played by Kurtag himself). The music consists of eerie pulsations quite different from much of Kurtag's writing.
The performances here are fine. The Keller Quartet has worked closely with Kurtag, and he is an infamously demanding teacher who insists on total perfection in perfomances of his music. Nonetheless, unless you are a Kurtag completist, I'd recommend hearing the string quartets performed by the Arditti Quartet on a Naive/Montaigne disc that also contains stunning quartets by Lutoslawski and Gubaidulina. That disc lacks "Aus der Ferne" and "Ligatura", but the material contributed by the other composers more than makes up for it, and the Ardittis have also worked closely with Kurtag. Nonetheless, if the Arditti disc isn't available to you (many of those Naive reissues are now rare), you can get this ECM disc with confidence.
Must-have recording December 27, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I heard the Boston Symphony play an orchestral piece of Kurtag's several years ago. I was impressed by the piece, and frankly have no idea why it took me so long to purchase this CD. There are a great many noteworthy string quartets of the last hundred years, and Kurtag's in some ways are the most unusual. While formidable technique and discipline are required to play them, the overall effect is not highly virtuosic, as you might remark about say, Bartok. The overall effect is more darkly contemplative, although there are certainly moments of great drama. Harmonically, they're quite wonderful, with much of the harmony in very low registers. The sparseness of the writing may bring Webern to mind, but the resemblance is only superficial. Kurtag speaks with his own distinct voice.
The reading by the Keller Quartet is excellent. It is both restrained and emotional. The quality of the recording is excellent, as one would expect from ECM.
Outstanding performances of important contemporary quartets January 6, 2004
17 out of 17 found this review helpful
Having released several discs featuring his music, ECM have played a major role in the in the recent buzz surrounding the Hungarian composer Gyoergy Kurtag. This disc of his three string quartets--all key works in the composer's oeuvre--by the outstanding Keller Quartet may well be the finest of all these recordings.The String Quartet, opus 1, was written in 1959, when Kurtag was 33. (It is perhaps a sign of the composer's lack of conventional self-confidence that none of his previous works had merited an opus number.) Written in six movements, it is composed in a language that is very obviously derived from Bartok and Webern, though even here (unlike, say, in the earlier Viola Concerto) Kurtag is clearly his own composer. The first movement is a brief, ambivalent exposition, the second plays with vigorous ostinati and the third is almost a conventional scherzo (though with slower passages interrupting). The fourth movement is perhaps a negation of the third: it is a slow movement with vigorous outbursts fragmenting the flow; while the fifth movement mirrors the second in its ostinato writing. The slow finale takes the material of the opening but extends it to more than four times the length of the first movement. If the String Quartet was an assured debut, the Twelve Microludes, opus 13, written in 1977 and 1978, demonstrate how much Kurtag was to grow as a composer in the next two decades. Even more miniaturised than the Quartet (its twelve movements last a mere ten minutes), it also contains a much greater variety of expression. The music includes several chorale-like movements and some that play with ostinati as in the Quartet, but the heart of the work is surely the fifth movement, whose haunting folk-like melody is heard as from afar, garlanded by fragmentary motifs on the other instruments. Officium breve, opus 28, is an instrumental requiem for the Hungarian composer Andre Szervanszky, written in 1988 and 1989. The work is in fifteen movements--which play without a break--and exhibits something of a collage form. The two linchpins of the work are an incomplete quotation from Szervanszky's Serenade for Strings and the remarkable canon that ends Webern's Second Cantata (a transcription for string quartet of which is the tenth movement of the quartet). Two movements, the third and the twelfth, both based on the Szervanszky quote, are transcribed directly from Szervanszky homages in the piano collection Jatekok. The work ends with ferociously dissonant varations on the Szervanszky quote that lead directly into the final movement, which is nothing more than that quote itself. This luminously tonal, Romantic music provides a sudden peripeteia, and sheds unexpected new light on what had come before. The disc also includes two miniatures. Aus der Ferne III, a homage to Paul Sacher on his 90th birthday, has appeared in a number of versions (two violins, piano four-hands) before this string quartet version. The Answered Unanswered Question (Homage-Message a Frances-Marie) is heard twice on this disc. Commemorating Frances-Marie Uitti and her bizarre double-bowing cello technique, this brief work, for two violins, two cellos and celesta, features the composer playing the celesta part. Both Officium breve and the Twelve Microludes strike me as amongst the finest of post-war quartets, and they deserve the strongest possible advocacy. Happily, the playing of the Keller Quartet is quite outstanding, and gets to the heart of the music in a way that the rival version from the Arditti Quartet cannot match. Even with the rather short (less than 50 minutes) playing time, this is an essential recording for anyone interested in postwar music.
dark, rich and splendid! July 27, 2001
21 out of 21 found this review helpful
This is an exquisite recording of some of the best in modern music. The three major pieces are Kurtag's String Quartet (op. 1) of 1959, the second quartet, 12 Microludes (op. 13), of 1977-78, and the third quartet, Officium Breve (op. 28) of 1988-89. Three shorter pieces are included as well, including two versions of Ligatura, with Kurtag on celesta. Kurtag clearly fuses Webern and Bartok, producing dark, rich music that is never exhausted through repeated listening. How does this 1996 KQ/ECM recording compare to the 1990 recording by the Arditti Quartet of Kurtag's three string quartets on Montaigne, supervised by Kurtag? (see my review) The KQ takes the tempos slightly slower, and this produces a suitably dramatic effect. The tempo difference is likely one chief cause of the difference in affect -- the AQ sounds more anguished overall, whereas the KQ is slightly more restrained, more stoic. Of course the KQ is treated to Manfred Eicher's patented production, with its noticeable resonance, and this produces a darker tone, it seems. The Montaigne production of the AQ is more natural, with a clean, clear surface. The KQ adds three short Kurtag pieces for an all-Kurtag set, while the AQ adds Lutoslawski's 25-minute quartet (his only one), and the 10-minute Second Quartet by Gubaidulina. ECM's graphics and packaging are stunning, as usual, with black-and-white photography. It is fascinating to hear the alternative interpretations, and Kurtag's works certainly warrant more! But if you hear only one, the Keller Quartet's recording is outstanding.
New Music which Dares to make an Impact January 11, 2001
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
As a member of a professional string quartet, I'm always on the lookout for new repertoire for my group to perform. I'd noticed that several Kurtag pieces had been performed (by the Emerson and Orion quartets, most recently) and wanted to see what all the buzz was about. Turns out, it was worth the purchase of this fine CD. I've always been a fan of Webern and Ligeti, and Kurtag seems to me to embody the best of these two composers' styles, while remaining very much his own distinct musical personality. The Keller Quartet plays these pieces with great virtuosity, but not at the expense of passion and what I can only describe as a "avant garde bel canto". If you have any interest in new music, and especially new music which is extraordinary, look no further than this disc.
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