Search - Gyorgy Kurtag, Witold Lutoslawski, Sofia Gubaidulina :: Kurtág, Lutoslawski & Gubaidulina: Works for String Quartet

A remarkable collection of string quartets from the second h

Christopher Culver | 11/08/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This Montaigne disc (a 2001 reissue of 1990 recordings) contains string quartets by three contemporary composers in the post-Webernian tradition. In the spotlight is Gyorgy Kurtag, the Hungarian composer who famously bloomed late with a relatively small body of music, who contributes three pieces. The disc is filled out with the string quartet of Witold Lutoslawski and the second quartet of Sofia Gubaidulina.



This disc was my first encounter with Gyorgy Kurtag, and I liked what I heard very much, enough to go on to acquire quite a collection of his music. He is a composer whose works are as compressed as Webern's, but while Webern's tend to seem crystalline and smooth, Kurtag's string quartets are shadowy, pitted, and mysterious, like vaguely Bartok's nocturnal world. If you've never heard these before, just imagine Ligeti's second string quartet under enormous pressure. Kurtag's "Quartetto per archi" (1959) was, in fact, his opus no. 1, his starting-over after a prior obligation to follow the Communist party line. It consists of six very short movements in arch structure, with the first serving as a spooky introduction to the quartet's harmonic soundworld and the sixth as epilogue, and the second and fifth both containing ostinatos. The middle two movements, with their references to Beethoven and Bartok, give a brief traditional shine.



Things get even briefer with Kurtag's next two string quartets. "Hommage a Mihaly Andras" (1977-78), a set of twelve "microludes", the shortest of which is but twelve seconds long. It explores many genres, from chorales to folk-song melodies to even totally-serious jingles. "Officium breve in memoriam Andreae Szervánszky" (1988-89) continues this same exploration of many styles, but has a much more coherent dramatic curve. Appropriate for a work in memory of the composer who introduced Webern to Hungary, the piece contains quotations from Webern. We may rest assured that these recordings are definitive, for Kurtag supervised their performance, and he is an infamously hard-to-please composer, quite unlike, say, Messiaen who would effuse over just any okay rendition.



Lutoslawski's "String Quartet" (1965) is one of the Polish composer's few works not for orchestra and was his only endeavour in the quartet genre. Written in his middle period while he was fascinated with aleatoric composition--a phase kicked off by "Venetian Games" (1961)--the piece gives the performers ample choice towards how to tackle the material. The exact application is that the players are given certain material and can play it however they like over a set amount of time, even repeating it if they like. The only catch is that they are not permitted to coordinate their playing in any way, so that a true aleatoric effect can be achieved.



Gubaidulina's "String Quartet No. 2" may be the greatest of the works represented here. It was commissioned by the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival for the Sibelius Quartet and premiered in 1987. Sixteen years had passed since her first quartet and in that time her compositional technique had changed entirely. During the 1970s her work began to be deeply inspired by her Eastern Orthodox faith, and in the 1980s this religious inspiration was accompanied by a profound interest in "zahlenmystik", or the use of mystical mathematical concepts such as the Fibonacci Sequence/Golden Ratio. This piece is related to her symphony "Stimmen ...Verstummen" of the previous year in its exhibition of musical forms which seem to be ultimately derived out of and subsequently returning into a divine silence, but whereas the symphony is centred around a D-major triad, the quartet takes as its basis a sustained G. I like this Arditti performance very much. I'm familiar with the Kronos and Danish Quartet performances as well, but the former is too flashy and unfocused, while the sound quality of the latter isn't ideal.



While I think Gubaidulina's work speaks to all who open their hearts--she's very talented in this respect--the Lutoslawski quartet and Kurtag's quartets require some prior acclimation to the string quartet tradition. If you're an experienced fan, however, I'd certain recommend this thoroughly fascinating disc, and it makes a wonderful introduction to Kurtag."