JACK Quartet: Ligeti / Pintscher / Cage / Xenakis - Wigmore Hall Live

Chronique

JACK Quartet, made up of former students from the Eastman School of Music, is committed to continuing and expanding the tradition of groups like the Arditti, LaSalle, and Kronos quartets in its adventurous exploration of contemporary repertoire. (Its name is derived from the initials of the first names of the founding members.) Like the Arditti, it has tended to focus on uncompromisingly modernist works, and in this recording of its Wigmore Hall debut, the group plays three classic 20th century quartets plus a work from 2009.
György Ligeti was among the most gifted composers of his generation at using a full arsenal of contemporary compositional procedures and extended instrumental techniques in the service of music that was transparently emotionally expressive and immediately engaging, and his String Quartet No. 2 (1968) is a beautiful exemplar of the kind of direct communication he establishes with listeners. Matthias Pintscher's 2009 quartet, Study IV for Treatise on the Veil, inspired by a series of drawings and paintings by Cy Twombly, is made up nearly entirely of gauzy, ephemeral gestures using delicate extended playing techniques that hover tremulously at the very low end of the audibility spectrum. It doesn't sound at all like Feldman, but like Feldman, it captivates by beckoning you to lean in and listen with all your attention. It's a piece whose profile is low, but it grows in stature on repeated hearings. Iannis Xenakis' single-movement Tetras (1983) is the sonic opposite of the Pintscher; brashly aggressive and extroverted, it's practically a compendium of the harshest sounds that can be extracted from string instruments. Its raw power is immensely appealing, and its visceral punch is thrilling and satisfying. John Cage wrote his String Quartet in Four Parts in 1949 and 1950, soon after his Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano, and it shares some of the earlier work's disarming charm and loveliness. For all the rigors of Cage's compositional procedures, the piece has a sweetness and innocence that is not so distant from the spacious "American" sound that was coming to be associated with Copland's music of the period (in its quieter moments, anyhow).
JACK's playing throughout is technically astounding; the players handle the composers' often outrageous rhythmic, registral, and timbral demands with absolute confidence and stylistic panache. More importantly, it understands the pieces and the composers' intent and are able to make even the most "difficult" music directly communicative. Fans of contemporary chamber music are likely to be thrilled with the outstanding quality of these performances, and listeners who are at all open to new aural experiences may find themselves swept up in the intensely expressive musicality of the pieces and the playing.

© TiVo