Here’s a recording that’s equal parts annoying and fascinating. While I have heard plenty of solo piano concept recordings blending single works or movements by different composers, I’ve not heard a string quartet concept recording do that. Well, here’s sixteen tracks of works composed by twelve composers, with only a handful of complete works, and only one complete well-known quartet, Janacek’s First. In such a case, the bleeding chunks should not work, but here, the Kuss sound so distinctive and stylized that they make some movements sound fresh as heck.
The recording opens with the first movement to Haydn’s
Seven Last Words, which sounds adequately somber, and that is followed by the magnificent
Hasta pulverizarse los ojos commissioned by the Kuss from Franceso Ciurlo, with some of the music barely hovering above an abstract whisper. The fifth movement from
Seven Last Words follows, and it sounds stylistically different from the first, and rather different from the few other versions I’ve heard. The Scherzo from
Death and the Maiden is one of the lightest, tightest, most dance-like takes I’ve heard, while the opening to Bartok’s Sixth sounds more transparent, lighter, and more forward looking, almost like Bartok looking forward to Ligeti looking back to Bartok. The DSCH Eighth Largo has the darkness and tension it needs, but it lacks excess heaviness. Some of the cello playing sounds especially effective, and when the movement trails off, Birke Bertelsmeier’s commissioned title track arrives in place of the anticipated Allegro molto. It emerges from silence well enough, and then displays hints of Gloria Coates, but with more tension. The first weak spot is the third movement from Steve Reich’s
WTC/911, with the taped voices detracting from the decent music. Komitas’
Spring returns to pure music, in a tuneful, lamenting, haunting, compact way. The Adagio to Mendelssohn’s Sixth sounds pitch perfect, and the Vivace from Smetana’s First sounds light and transparent, though somewhat anonymous. It’s not Czech quartet playing. Janacek’s First benefits from extremely clean, clear playing, with the second violin and viola uncommonly clear throughout. The playing seems to trade expressivity for precision, but that’s fine. The recording closes with the third and final Kuss commission from Oscar Escudero, entitled
Post. It begins with an ambient noise/electronic sound/spoken word (performed by the violist) that then segues into three fragments composed by an “algorithm”, with electronics interspersed throughout. It’s a high-tech mishmash of classical style compositions, a post-post-avant-garde style work that has a few moments of success but is really just a gimmick. At least it doesn’t offend the senses like Xenakis.
One of the main outcomes of listening to this is that I now want to hear the complete versions of every work the Kuss extracted movements from. That’s the annoying part. And I want to listen to Ciurlo and Bertelsmeier some more. A heckuva concept disc, this. That’s the fascinating part.