Label: New World Records

3つの弦楽四重奏曲を纏めた激推し作!!モートン フェルドマンやアール ブラウン、ジョン ケージといった40年代以降のニューヨークで活動した"ニューヨーク・スクール"の作曲家/実験音楽家であるクリスチャン・ウォルフ。巨匠勢の作品を100曲以上演奏、またEdition WandelweiserやAnother Timbreにもプレイヤーとして登場している超実力派集団"Quatuor Bozzini"演奏による、氏の弦楽四重奏曲だけにフォーカスした音源集。ヨーロッパの伝統からだけでなくアイヴズやケージからの派生、そして表現に対する鋭い感性及び微妙なニュアンスによって和らげられた一種の自由さが感じ取れる素晴らしい音楽性。







World premiere recordings.

Starting with his music of the 1960s and early 1970s, with works such as For 1, 2 or 3 People (1964), the Prose Collection (1968–71), and Changing the System (1974), Christian Wolff (b. 1934) quietly re-invented chamber music. He created music in which the activities of the performers— timing, cueing, assembling and selecting materials—were foregrounded. Although to some extent these activities were always a part of classical music, Wolff opened them up for creative decision-making by the musicians themselves.

Charles Ives began to develop a different conception with (among other works) his String Quartet No. 2 (1913). It portrays four individuals who come together to have a discussion that turns into an argument (presumably over politics) and then its transcendental resolution in the mountains. With Ives and then others from the American Experimental Tradition (including John Cage), chamber music starts to become a place where differences are unleashed.

Given his exploration of the ontology of "people making music together", the string quartet, laden as it is with the tradition of unity, might not at first seem to be an obvious fit to Wolff’s sensibilities. But his quartet music stems as much from Ives and Cage as from the European art music tradition. The four characters of Ives become four people playing music. In one piece he simply calls them “2 violinists, violist and cellist.” Sometimes they are asked to coordinate like a traditional quartet. But at other times (often in the same piece), they are pushed to the point of dissolution. Here we find a music that allows for the spontaneous expression of four musicians who are bound together by something more than the rule of the bar line.