MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively
CD: AmazonUK AmazonUS
Download: Classicsonline


Four Amercian Quartets
Ralph EVANS (b. 1953)

String Quartet No.1 (1995) [15:02]

Philip GLASS (b. 1937)

String Quartet No.2, Company (1983) [8:51]

George ANTHEIL (b. 1900–1959)

String Quartet No.3 (1948) [18:16]

Bernard HERRMANN (1911–1975)

Echoes for String Quartet (1965) [20:17]

Fine Arts Quartet: (Ralph Evans (violin); Efim Boico (violin); Yuri Gandelsman (viola); Wolfgang Laufer (cello))

rec. 17-19 March 2007, Il Bagno Konzertgalerie, Steinfurt, Germany. DDD
NAXOS 8.559354 [62:27]

Experience Classicsonline


This is an interesting and intelligently planned recital mixing the unknown with the well known, by composers similarly covered.
 

Evans is the leader of the Quartet and his work, which he started in 1966 but only completed thirty years later, is written, according to the notes, “in a non–derivative style”. To me it seems to reek of Hindemith, but without that composer’s humour. It’s well laid out for the instruments but I find little of substance and interest in it. 

The other works are far superior examples of American quartet writing. Company is an early manifestation, in quartet writing, of the style which has made Glass famous. It’s more subdued than much of his work, but it’s none the worse for that. Hypnotic and quite beautiful, Company started life as music for a theatrical presentation of the prose poem by Samuel Beckett. Whereas Beckett’s language can be dense and, seemingly, impenetrable, Glass’s music is clear and light. It’s one of his most easily approachable works. 

The self-styled “bad boy of music”, George Antheil is a fascinating character. His life story, which he told with great hilarity in his autobiography, Bad Boy of Music, (Doubleday, New York (1945)) is both fascinating and very entertaining. In his early career he lived in Paris, above Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company premises - which printed the very first edition of Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922. There he gave recitals of ultra-modern piano works – with a loaded pistol resting on the audience side of the instrument. This, he says, ensured a quiet - if not necessarily attentive – audience. He achieved notoriety with his compositions – Ballet Mécanique being the most scandalous. He returned to America in 1936 and, with this move, his music became more relaxed and easy-going. He also wrote many film scores alongside his concert works. 

Antheil wasn’t just a composer in America. He was a reporter during World War II, contributing columns on endocinology to Esquire magazine, and advice to the love-lorn for the Chicago Sun Syndicate – a kind of Dear Deirdre which appears in many tabloid newspapers today. With actress Hedy Lamarr he patented a torpedo guidance system and a broad-spectrum signal transmission system which was called frequency skipping. He also published two books - Death In the Dark, a crime novel (1930), Everyman His Own Detective: A Study of Glandular Criminology (Stackpole Sons, New York City (1937)) and a pamphlet The Shape of the War to Come (1940) as well as his autobiography.

His Third Quartet is light-hearted and very pleasant. The first movement always makes me think of cowboys and the great outdoors. There is a folksy feel to the music and it’s quite delightful. This is no bad boy of music, more a kindly old-timer. Some people have, unkindly, stated that after his return to America his music was never as interesting as his early, avant-garde, works. This is nonsense for there is as much thought and intelligence in this music as in any he wrote. It’s just that his later works want to be audience-friendly and he’s done his bit scaring the horses. 

Perhaps more than almost any other composer, Bernard Herrmann craved success in the concert hall and felt that he had wasted his time producing music for film. It is unfortunate that, for me, the majority of his concert works – a Symphony and Cantata based on Moby Dick included – simply don’t make it. Their language and gestures are simply too earthbound and the ideas never seem to take fire as did so much of his music for the silver screen. For instance, if the Death Hunt from his score for On Dangerous Ground (1951) was the scherzo of the Symphony there would be the beginnings of a potentially great work. There are a couple of concert works which do work and which are well worthy of our attention – the exquisite orchestral miniature For the Fallen (1943) and the quartet, Echoes, which closes this disk. 

Echoes was Herrmann’s first work for quartet. As it turned out, it was also his last. Its origins lie in ballet - it was danced by the Royal Ballet in 1971. There are ten movements, which play without a break, and the music is colourful and exciting. It’s a cogent and tersely argued work which will reward repeated listening. 

The performances of the Fine Arts Quartet are full-blooded and very committed. The recorded sound is clear, if slightly lacking in reverberation. Well worth having for the Herrmann and Antheil scores which should be better known.

Bob Briggs 

see also Review by Rob Barnett


 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.