Birtwistle: Complete String Quartets

Listen on Presto Music. Free thirty day trial. Find out more.

The Ardittis have mastered the constant turning on dimes that this mercurial writing demands, moving effortlessly between different dynamics and attacks, while still keeping the music tightly... — BBC Music Magazine, October 2012, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 28th May 2012
Catalogue No: AECD1217
Label: Aeon
Length: 59 minutes

Birtwistle: String Quartet: The Tree of Strings (2007)

Work length29:01

Album only

Arditti Quartet

Birtwistle: 9 Movements for String Quartet (1991-96)

Work length30:26

$9.00

$13.50

Arditti Quartet

Fantasia 1

Track length3:35

$1.00

$1.50

Frieze 1

Track length3:25

$1.00

$1.50

Fantasia 2

Track length2:58

$1.00

$1.50

Fantasia 3

Track length1:54

$1.00

$1.50

Frieze 2

Track length3:09

$1.00

$1.50

Fantasia 4

Track length3:11

$1.00

$1.50

Frieze 3

Track length4:20

$1.00

$1.50

Fantasia 5

Track length3:34

$1.00

$1.50

Todesfuge - Frieze 4

Track length4:20

$1.00

$1.50

About
Reviews
Explore

About

Harrison Birtwistle is unquestionably one of the most frequently performed British composers on the contemporary scene. Although bowed strings are the raison d’être of this disc, their absence is no less conspicuous in the composer's early and mature works, for he waited until he was nearly 60 before writing for string quartet, strictly speaking, and the works brought together here remain, up to the present day, his only original works written exclusively for strings.

The recording of these works by the Arditti Quartet, dedicatee of the String Quartet: The Tree of Strings, which was composed for them, reflects the most recent development resulting from Birtwistle's working with this ensemble over the past twenty years.

Reviews

October 2012

The Ardittis have mastered the constant turning on dimes that this mercurial writing demands, moving effortlessly between different dynamics and attacks, while still keeping the music tightly coiled.

October 2012

Obviously enough, [the] theatrical aspect cannot be reproduced on audio disc, but The Tree of Strings still comes across as one of Birtwistle's most powerfully sustained and expressively compelling musical designs.

3rd May 2012

[The Tree of Strings is] one of the most powerful of his recent works, alternating moments of total stillness with passages of great athleticism and rhythmic energy, or long, continuously evolving melodic lines....their performances here are...remarkable for their clarity, precision and grasp of the music's intricate structure.

Birtwistle: Complete String Quartets

Downloads

Contents

Download queue