Richard Danielpour: String Quartets Nos. 5-7

Album review

The American composer Richard Danielpour has found success with a conservative but not strongly tonal idiom that gains accessibility through broad, communicative gestures. When they're harnessed to a program, as they are in all three of these works, the effect can be quite powerful. Danielpour has been especially noted for operas and for other vocal works, and the music really takes wing in the Hebrew-and-English psalm finale of the String Quartet No. 7 ("Psalms of Solace"), even if soprano Hila Plitmann does not articulate the English words very clearly. You might not guess, even with the help of the subtitle "In search of La vita nuova," that the String Quartet No. 5 deals with Danielpour's long relationship with Italy, but the String Quartet No. 6 ("Addio"), alluding to Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 26 in E flat major, Op. 81a ("Les adieux") and other relevant works, is strongly evocative. Danielpour actually sought out a sibling string quartet to premiere the work, but Florida's Delray String Quartet adeptly balances the expressive qualities of the music with the composer's basic compact, polyphonic language. These are attractive works that could fit into any number of thematic programs, and the Delray has performed a service by giving them their world premieres.

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