Arditti Quartet - Helmut Lachenmann: Grido; Reigen seliger Geister; Gran Torso download album

Arditti Quartet - Helmut Lachenmann: Grido; Reigen seliger Geister; Gran Torso

Artist: Arditti Quartet

Album: Helmut Lachenmann: Grido; Reigen seliger Geister; Gran Torso

Release Date: 2007

Genre: Classical

Format: mp3 / FLAC

This disc of Helmut Lachenmann's three string quartets played by the Arditti String Quartet presents the works in reverse order of composition. Thus, Grido from 2002 comes first, Gran Torso from 1972 comes last, and Reigen seliger Geister from 1989 comes between the two. It hardly matters. With their unrelenting obsession with deconstructing and destroying any and every traditional means of composing and performing music, Lachenmann's quartets could come in any order or even no order at all. And yet, as the Arditti String Quartet's masterful performances demonstrate, deconstruction does not mean Lachenmann's music is without logical and dramatic form, nor does destruction mean it is without emotional expression or effect. What exactly that form might be and what precise emotions it might express are unknowable, but Lachenmann's quartets are still so unbearably intense and so overwhelmingly articulate that no one could fail to feel moved by them. Though Lachenmann composed his quartets at the extreme edge of instrumental technique -- there are sounds that seem to come from another plane of existence altogether -- the Arditti's dedicated performances transform what could have been noises into a coherent and compelling aesthetic whole. Recorded so that the listener seems enveloped in the music, this disc is not for the timid. But those who enjoy the music of Rihm and Nono will likely enjoy Lachenmann's quartets.