Arditti Quartet and Irvine Arditti – Gerhard: Complete String Quartets & Chaconne (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 54:31 minutes | 490 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aeon
Born in Catalonia and Arnold Schönberg’s sole Spanish student, Roberto Gerhard is, after Manuel de Falla, the boldest and most brilliant representative of the music of his country. Forced into the exile by the Spanish civil war, he became a British citizen and spend his last years in Cambridge. Although they never met, the connection with the Arditti Quartet seems to have been preordained, as illustrated by this superb recording of what can be considered the composer’s masterworks.
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Frode Haltli, Arditti Quartet & Trondheim Soloists – Air (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 44:51 minutes | 744 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series
Frode Haltli, the uniquely expressive Norwegian accordionist, is heard here with chamber orchestra, with string quartet and solo, performing music by Danish composers Bent Sørensen (b. 1958) and Hans Abrahamsen (b. 1952). Haltli plays Sørensen’s It is Pain Flowing Down Softly on a White Wall with the Trondheim Soloists, as well as the solo piece Sigrid’s Lullaby. Hans Abrahamsen’s Three Little Nocturnes find the accordionist in the company of the redoubtable Arditti Quartet, “a vital institution in contemporary music” as Haltli says. For the title composition Air, Hans Abrahamsen returned, at Frode Haltli’s suggestion, to the early solo work Canzona, revising it until it became a new piece. Of Abrahamsen’s music, Frode Haltli writes that “not one note is accidental, nor are any of the other specifications. Sometimes, this results in very complex music, while a moment later it is so simple that it seems a child could perform it. He writes music that can be on the verge of being discomforting, while at the same time it is indescribably lovely.”
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Arditti Quartet, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Stephan Heuberger & Matthias Pintscher – Musica viva, Vol. 37: Mark Andre (Live) (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:06:51 minutes | 589 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BR-Klassik
The German-French composer Mark Andre (b.1964) is one of the most important representatives of New Music. His twelve “Miniatures” for string quartet were composed in 2014/17 as a commission from the Arditti Quartet, Bavarian Radio’s “musica viva”, the Festival d’Automne à Paris and the ProQuartet-CEMC, funded by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. Andre created his organ work “Himmelfahrt” (Ascension), funded by the Siemens Music Foundation, in 2018 on behalf of the Evangelical Church in Germany. The orchestral work woher…wohin was written between 2015 and 2017 as a composition commission by BR’s “musica viva” in conjunction with the Happy New Ears prize for composition from the Hans and Gertrud Zender Foundation. The live recordings of all three works are now being released in the CD edition of Bavarian Radio’s “musica viva” concert series on BR-KLASSIK.
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