The Kroger Quartet Norgard: String Quartets 7, 8, 9 and 10 Genre:Classical Per Norgard (b. 1932) is one of the most original artists in the cultural life of Denmark. Since 2002 the composer has had a remarkable collaboration with the young Kroger Quartet, to whom he has dedicated his seventh and ... more »tenth string quartets. Norgard experimented directly with the Kroger Quartet while composing his tenth string quartet, `Harvest Timeless', for the ensemble in 2005, thus creating an unusual dialogue between composer and performers. Now the Kroger Quartet's journey deep into Norgard's music culminates with the premiere recording of Norgard's four most recent string quartets on CD.« less
Per Norgard (b. 1932) is one of the most original artists in the cultural life of Denmark. Since 2002 the composer has had a remarkable collaboration with the young Kroger Quartet, to whom he has dedicated his seventh and tenth string quartets. Norgard experimented directly with the Kroger Quartet while composing his tenth string quartet, `Harvest Timeless', for the ensemble in 2005, thus creating an unusual dialogue between composer and performers. Now the Kroger Quartet's journey deep into Norgard's music culminates with the premiere recording of Norgard's four most recent string quartets on CD.
CD Reviews
Excellent chamber music (auntie optional)
Jim Shine | Dublin, Ireland | 06/24/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Per Noergaard has a lot of interesting ideas about music, and one of the most interesting I found on the web site www.pernoergaard.dk is that of music that your proverbial auntie can understand. In the composer's own words: "There is nothing wrong about music being complex, but there should also be a layer that is immediately accessible - the auntie layer. There are of course days when one is just an aunt and has no desire to be anything else. A piece of music should possess this generosity, that it opens itself up to all and sundry. The music should not just stand there saying: 'Now you listen properly to me, or else you can just leave!' ". He's not saying music must be simple - just that there has to be a way in for the non-expert. As a non-expert myself, I very much appreciate this sentiment, and it's one that is wholly borne out by this new disc. Having said that, auntie must bring something to the table too: I'm not sure if I could convince any of my own aunties of the ethereal microtonal beauty of the middle movement of the seventh quartet, or the fascination of the scales of the third movement. In the dark eighth quartet, based on Noergaard's World War I chamber opera Nuit des Hommes, I could probably get them to agree that the fourth movement really, genuinely does sound like the quartet's title, Night Descending like Smoke, and whatever they think of the ninth, surely they would accept that the rapid figurations towards the end, rising up into nothing, are indeed what Noergaard promises, the music disappearing back into its source, like backwards film of the creation of the universe. Unfortunately my aunties know nothing about Mahler and so won't be in a position to discuss the idea that, in its opening at least, the lyrical tenth quartet is not unlike something he might have composed. In the end, sad to say, it's unlikely that my particular aunties will share my belief that these four quartets are utterly absorbing, dramatic, complex yet accessible, sometimes beautiful, sometimes thrilling, sometimes unsettling, and always rewarding. The young Kroger Quartet, dedicatees of the seventh and tenth quartets, sound like they are at one with this music, and as a bonus the booklet notes by Jorgen I. Jensen are highly informative and enlightening. This is one of those rare occasions when I hear the music of a composer for the first time and want to hear everything else he's written."
A fine introduction to Nørgård's world
F. A. Harrington | Boston MA | 06/29/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Per Nørgård is a name that floats around in the new music universe but doesn't seem to show up in concerts or on discs very often. Perhaps it's because his music is a bit hard to label or categorize. It uses quarter-tones and note-rows, but isn't really dissonant, I'm not even sure it's really "atonal". It's rhythmic, but not percussive. It's not melodic but still in it's own way lyrical. It's probably frustrating to the type of listener who wants to divide things into this or that because it will be both or neither of them at the same time.
I even keep thinking the picture on the cover is upside-down.
At the start of String Quartet No. 7, notes appear out of the mist as if looking for a purpose. They try on different rhythmic guises for size, never quite settling in. A sort of interlocking of parts commences, part of this against part of that, before returning to the mysterious calm, which really has similar rhythmic activity only much, much slower. This leads us into the second movement, which largely based around a chord which uses the note a quarter-tone between the minor and major third, sounding not so much dissonant but just sort of strange, making your ear want to pull it one way or the other, but never quite giving it the chance before it moves on.
Quartet No. 8 is based on Nørgård's opera "Night of Man" which itself is based on Apollinaire's writings on World War I.(Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War (1913-1916)) In reflecting ill-advised triumphalism, the writing is more strident and dissonant (the first movement has an ending Tchaikovsky could have written if he'd ever made the unlikely choice to use these particular combinations of notes) and in its reflective and mournful times more anguished, but never becomes hysterical in either direction. Scales battle intervals. Rhythms align and then reproach. These all turn themselves into marches and hymns which never quite congeal. A really masterful work.
Quartet No. 9 has motific development out of Schubert or Brahms (again with different notes and rhythms) but turns them into textures recalling Lutoslawski.(The Essential Lutoslawski) I'd say it's the most abstract piece on the disc, but in the way Haydn is abstract, there's no programmatic narrative, but your interest is maintained in observing how the lines change and move forward. (By the way, to be clear, these comparisons to other composers reflect their inner workings, how they get from point A to point B, not really how they sound.)
Quartet No. 10 is perhaps the easiest entry point (and it's on one track if you like to download previews). Swirling lines, albeit with a jagged edge sometimes proliferate, often sounding reminiscent of Nielsen and Sibelius, to name two obvious predecessors (and here I am talking about sound) , or even closer contemporaries like Pärt (though with more rough textures) or Schnittke (without the zaniness). Another standout work.
The Kroger Quartet is obviously devoted to Nørgård's music. The notes quote the astounding length of time they devoted to rehearsals for one of his other quartets. Nørgård returns the favor with at least two of the quartets here having been written for the Krogers. The recording is excellent, providing the requisite atmosphere without overdoing it (ECM engineers take note). Hopefully this release will help nudge Nørgård a bit closer to the mainstream.
"
Expressing the inexpressible
Dean R. Brierly | Studio City, CA | 06/30/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I've always felt that a string quartet is somewhat akin to a small jazz group, in that the musicians in both must not only be fully attuned to their own performances, but also that of the other members. Jazz musicians arguably have a more highly developed sense of musical ESP due to the improvisational nature of the medium. But even working within more tightly plotted compositional parameters, string quartet players still have quite a bit of interpretive leeway, especially with modern classical composers, and more especially with composers like Per Norgard. The Denmark native has consistently refused to repeat himself over a decades-long career, pioneering many innovative techniques and approaches, and always pushing his music in new and often startling directions. His string quartets are no exception. The four examples on this disc, composed between 1993 and 2005, all sound quite different from one another, while remaining recognizably Norgardian. Each of these works is marked by a sense of freedom and unpredictability, as one is never quite sure in which direction the next notes are going. It takes musicians of rare empathy and talent to make this music fully come alive, and the Norgard Quartet proves itself firmly locked into Norgard's sound world in these stunning performances. While the quartets manifest significant compositional differences, they betray a consistent tension in the way Norgard's musical shapes and patterns alternately intertwine and clash. Simply put, he alternates dissonant and melodic phrases in a way uniquely his own. Preventing the music from ever sounding academic is a pervasive sense of drama and misterioso. Make no mistake, this is challenging music that demands an open mind and open ears, but it is anything but impenetrable, and it rewards the attentive listener with its deeply meditative, if chillingly abstract, beauty."
Norgard: String Quartets 7, 8, 9, and 10
Ian Campbell Mcneill | 07/27/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This is my first review.
i inaugurated the second phase of my nordic string quartet study with per norgard's string quartets 1-6 (kontra qrt/kontrapunkt), and for whatever reasons, i totally disliked everything but the first early, six minute, quartet, which i thought had a fresh fresco-like quality, bold relief, and dramatic.
norgard's two late 60's quartets is what really turned me off, so i held out hope for the sixth, titled "tintinnabulary", hoping for a quartet realization of all of norgard's achievements, but i was greeted with a very rough, ugly, aggressive sounding music, and i do now wonder in this last quartet if the kontra qrt itself, and the recording, perhaps maybe along with the music were to blame.
i think the same day i was looking online and saw this cd of norgard's qrts 7-10, and sighed that now would have to get this too just to find out what he was thinking, and then thinking i could offer both on ebay!
so finally norgard's 7-10 arrives, and to be sure, the previous reviewers get all the credit. had they panned it, i would have concluded that norgard had delved further into the world of the late 80's qrt 6, and i would have ended my inquiry. but on the strength of these glowing reviews i knew norgard's quartet writing must have gone through a blossoming in the 90's, and i knew there was masterpiece quartet writing to be had.
and now i sincerely write that this entire cd is...i just can't stop listening!
after my bad experience with qrt 6, qrt 7 comes across very...enigmatic, very mature and refined, everything that norgard had been working on in the previous qrt comes on fully fledged, especially in the third movement's insistence. a certain norgard style was emerging, which takes me to qrt 9 ("into the source")...
which, so far, is the culmination of this quartet style in norgard. 9 utilizes the "tintinnabulary" style, not like the popular version, but more like xenakis' rhythmic dislocation on a steady pulse. norgard's obsessiveness, i think, had indeed taken us into the source of the sound and time in this quartet. it reminds me of the opening shot of tarkovsky's "solaris", if that makes any sense!. i do hear a lot of the distinctive xenakian rhythms, swirling...i don't know why i'm calling this true minimalism, but it seems to me that by applying the universe of ideas to simplicity equals here in norgard's music i think the transcendence norgard has always been looking for, from the micro-tonal first experiment in the obsessive 60's 5th qrt. finally the obsession has yielded a masterpiece, and it is now fair to say that the arditti have both qrts 6 and 9 in their rep.
so qrts 6, 7, and 9, form a modern arc for norgard, and now i am glad that i heard the qrt 6 first, and hated it, and have listened to it now, and i don't know if it is the kontra quartets playing, so rough and aggressive, norgard's style at the time, the music itself, and i don't recommend the cd, so...but for the sake of this review it was worth it. qrt 9 is a very exciting qrt to be written in the last fifteen years of arditti dominated super quartets by all the famous composers, another favorite being berio's "glossa", though, i digress.
this leaves qrts 8 and 10, and i think they form a pair, both titled, and both very visual, like a painting. i think both are masterpiece. the five movement 8th seems to contain the universe, mysterious melodies and harmonies, close up, far away; and yes, the fourth movement does sound like darkness descending, but all the movements have such a wealth of character and have such exciting sounds, that the entire quartet does sound like a symphony. please take these descriptions as addendum to all the previous reviewers thoughts.
and qrt 10 is like a single movement, shorter version of 8, but with a totally different idea behind it, like between quartets 8, 9, and 10 we see three totally different aspects of a mind that does seem like it is always searching. one of qrt 8's movements is named "voyage."
and now the Playing by the kroger quartet...and i don't know, the music and the playing, both, seem to be the same entity. the kroger's started with norgard after qrt 6, so with that as a dry run, norgard now had his own personal string quartet to play with. and the booklet states the groups devotion to this music, and the entire cd just reeks of love, yes, i am writing a love letter, haha. i would like to hear them, or the arditti for that matter, do qrt 6, compared to the kontra, to get a better perspective of that work.
recently i have gotten quartets by marco, boucourechliev, ohana, grosskopf, nishimura, i even have boulez' "livre pour quatuor" coming soon, hopefully,- all the arditti stuff and more, but these quartets by norgard have touched me by their all encompassing searching and humanity and their universal creativity and visionary style... not to mention the sheer joy of a spectacular quartet playing so many fun sounds!
this is the kroger's debut cd, and they are going to the head of the class...but i'm still getting rid of the old norgard!"
