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Three String Quartets, The Lyric Quartet
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This collection of the complete string quartets of Gavin Bryars displays the composer's intimate understanding of the instruments, exploiting their whole range of sonorities to produce music that by turns pulsates with life, and haunts with its poignancy. Himself a double-bass player, Bryars relishes the quartet's capacity for colour and expression, bringing forward the often under-used inner parts, and employing a variety of exciting tuning-effects, harmonics and textural combinations.The title of the Quartet No.1, 'Between the National and the Bristol', alludes to one night in Vienna, 1906, when the three most famous dancers of the age were all staying in the city: Maud Allan at the National, Mata Hari at the Hotel Bristol, and Isadora Duncan at a hotel 'somewhere between the National and the Bristol'. The piece is a heady mixture of string effects, encompassing the de-tuning of strings, explorations of texture and space, and even an evocation of the composer's own instrument, the bass.Quartet No.2 'begins where the first quartet ends - with harmonics' (see Bryars's booklet notes) and goes even further into the diverse tone-colours and textures of the string quartet, counterpointing these with melodic phrases emerging over pulsing chords. Quartet No.3, never recorded before, is a stunning one-movement work in which the acclaimed Lyric Quartet is called upon to omit vibrato, resulting in a haunting and intense sound-world that recalls the music of Gesualdo and Purcell. Exploiting the instruments' full range, Bryars weaves together aching suspensions and exquisite sonorities in some of his most powerful music.ComposerGavin Bryars Only $11.98 - Click here to buy now! |