Search - Arditti Quartet, Alexandre Delgado, Joao Pedro Oliveira :: Contemporary Portugese Chamber Music

More details on this recording.

greg taylor | Portland, Oregon United States | 05/01/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I am writing this to provide more information on this recording rather than to write a review. I am not particularly competent to write reviews on classical music although I sometimes manage to ignore my inadequacies long enough to trip over them on the pages of Amazon.

This is part of an ongoing project by the great Arditti String Quartet to record new or recent compositions for string quartets. Most of these Arditti Edition recordings are on the Montaigne label. More information can be found on this important project by looking up 'Arditti string quartet' on Amazon and then looking for the Listmania Lists of autonomeus and saareman. Or you can go to the Arditti string quartet web site. There are over forty CDs in the project by now. Many are devoted to the works of individual composers (Berg, Ligeti, Cage, Carter, Ferneyhough, Webern, Reynolds, etc.). But some of my favorites are CDs whose composers are united by nationality or region. In this groupings the Ardittis have focused on composers from California, the USA, Scandinavia, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Vienna. By the way, if anybody knows where I can get a copy of the Vienna collection at a reasonable price please let me know.

This CD brings together five string quartets by Portuguese composers born after 1951. The composers are Antonio Pinho Vargas, Joao Pedro Oliveira, Alexandre Delgado, Luis Tinoco and Eugenio Manuel Rodriques.

It is unfortunate that there are no sound samples for these recordings. They are all superb- very lyrical and accesible. Right now I am listening to 'Mata Hari' by Rodriques. According to the somewhat useful notes by Ivan Moody (is there a reason why so few of the essayists on classical CDs attempt anything like a technical explanation of the music? That would be dumbed down enough that we plain folks could learn from it?)this piece is imagined as an erotic dance performed by Mata Hari. It has great rhythmic drive and is based on Portuguese folk melodies but I have a hard time believing some of the harmonies are traditional. Oliveira's 'Peregrinacao'(please excuse the lack of punctuation marks for these Portuguese words)is another favorite of mine.

All in all this is one of the worthier of the CDs within the grouping of the nationally themed CDs by the Ardittis. I would put it with the 'From USA', 'From Italy' and 'From Scandinavia' members of that grouping.

If you are unfamiliar with this project of the Arditti quartet this is a good place to start. If you are a collector of their work (as any lover of string quartets should be) this is a potent addition to your collection.

And do me a favor- if you are reading this and Amazon has not corrected the listing by putting the Arditti quartet down as the artists then scroll down to the bottom of the page and give them whatfor."