Elliot Carter: String Quartets Nos. 2, 3 and 4 (CD)

• Category:  Music  »  Classical Music  »  General/Classical
• Format: CD   Learn more about the CD format using Tower WIKI.
• Release Date: February 24, 2009
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Naxos
• UPC: 636943936320
• WAPI (Tower ID): 113131613
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• Tower.com Sales Rank: #16846 in Music (See Top 100 Music Bestsellers)
• #1564 in Classical Music (See Top 100 Classical Music Bestsellers)
• #102 in General/Classical (See Top 100 General/Classical Bestsellers)

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Hailed by Gramophone as "one of the finest and most energetic quartets of the younger generation" and named by Musical America as the 2009 Ensemble of the Year, the Pacifica Quartet received a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance for their acclaimed Naxos recording of Elliott Carter String Quartets Nos. 1 and 5. The recording has garnered praise from major critics, including Steve Smith of The New York Times, who deemed it "a stunning disc of Quartets No. 1 and No. 5 ... on Naxos." The Times of London commented: "The Pacificas, who have given all five works in a prodigious single programme, play magnificently."

While String Quartet No. 2 (1959) is half the length of its predecessor, it is even more technically demanding. Unlike String Quartet No. 1, in which musical events occur in succession, in the second quartet involves simultaneous developments. Moreover, while the first quartet follows a more traditional concept of theme and development, Carter has created in its successor "a scenario for the players to act out with their instruments." In String Quartet No. 2, Carter gives each of the four instrumental parts its own intervals, rhythms and other expressive characteristics, mapped into a continuous nine-section form. In a sense, the texture of the quartet is "made up of ... propositions, responses and disagreements, like four contentious individuals chattering away at one another."

The renowned Juilliard String Quartet spent a full year in rehearsals before they felt ready to introduce String Quartet No. 3 in 1971. For this work, Carter divides the quartet into Duo I, (second violin and viola), and Duo II, (first violin and cello) and instructs that Duo II should play strictly in time throughout, while Duo I should play with expressive freedom in order to maximize the contrast. Each Duo performs its own sequence of contrasting movements - six kinds of music for Duo I and four for Duo II.

String Quartet No.4 (1986) is organized in a seemingly traditional four-movement form: Appassionato, Scherzando(stresso tempo), Lento(stresso tempo), and Presto. Here, as in Quartet No. 2, the players are cast as individuals, but any nod to tradition ends there. The harmonic language is gritty, with subtle contrasts. And in the Lento movement, a new structural feature (to which the first two movements allude) begins to emerge: "the use of variously measured silences. Towards the end of the fizzing Presto, the silences become dramatic, as the fast music is increasingly opposed by music of remote stillness. Yet at the end, when the still music seems to have "won", the fast music reasserts itself with just a mercurial flicker."

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