Into the Light

Chronique

While many string quartets concentrate on the standard Classical and Romantic literature, the Telegraph Quartet takes a special interest in works that exist on the periphery of 20th century chamber music. The group's debut recording on Centaur, Into the Light, brings attention to three modernist works that are infrequently performed, though deserving of greater attention. Leon Kirchner's String Quartet No. 1 (1949) is perhaps the underdog of the program, for much of this composer's uncompromising music has been overlooked because it resists easy categorization. While neither 12-tone nor serialist, Kirchner's music fits into the postwar avant-garde with its jagged rhythms, intense dissonances, and sharply contrasting expressions, so listeners may need to hear this knotty work more than once to tease out its formal coherence and the lyrical impulses behind the abrasive surfaces. Anton Webern's Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5 (1909) is even more compressed in its material, freely atonal, and gnomic in expression, yet more than the other works on the program, it has found a niche in the repertoire as one of the most approachable works of the Second Viennese School. More immediately appealing, though not conventional, is Benjamin Britten's youthful Three Divertimenti (1936), which is playfully neoclassical, tonally sophisticated, and exciting in its virtuosic string writing. The album's timing at 40:15 is quite short for a CD, and some may feel that the Telegraph Quartet should have added another work or two to give better value to listeners, but the length of this album is just right, considering the intensity and density of the music. An impressive beginning for an adventurous group, this 2018 release puts the Telegraph Quartet on the map.
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