Spanish Basque composer Andrés Isasi made his first appearance
on Naxos nearly a decade ago (8.557584, review),
so this sequel has been a long time coming. However, two further
volumes towards this complete quartets series are promised and
have indeed already been recorded by the Isasi Quartet. As the
accompanying notes explain, there are three more full works
extant, as well as a three-movement quartet that was likely
unfinished, a few fragments and two stand-alone short pieces
for the medium. With luck those discs will pack them all in
and be more generously furnished than this one.
Written just over a decade apart, these two quartets are fairly
similar in essence, if less so in practice. Elegance, wistfulness,
folk influences, memorable melodies, minor keys and a lack of
pretentiousness - these are prominent features of both. As the
promotional blurb says, Grieg and Dvořák are two
of the more obvious references, but so is someone like Weingartner
in the more Germanically oriented A minor work. There is at
any rate hardly a trace of Spanish or Basque nationalism in
these works - lending Naxos's 'Spanish Classics' ticket a touch
of irony. Despite their name, the Isasi Quartet are a primarily
German ensemble, an attribute that fits rather well with Isasi's
style. This is an impressive debut for Naxos by the Quartet:
sympathetic and thoughtful, technically adept and cogent.
Sound quality is pretty good, clean and spacious with just a
hint of perforation at the edges. One minor complaint is that
the final milliseconds of each track have had natural reverberation
quickly killed by human intervention. This happens surprisingly
frequently even in modern recordings where extreme shortage
of space is rarely an issue; only producers will know why they
do such a pointless thing, but at least in this case the effect
is minuscule.
Richard Whitehouse's descriptive notes are typically informative
and well written. Roll on, volume two.
Byzantion
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Isasi Quartet 