Resch/Beethoven: String quartets (Genuin)
★★★★☆
🎧 Spotify | Apple Music | Amazon
The trouble with most music by unfamiliar contemporary composers is that the listener has no idea where it’s coming from. The Austrian Gerald Resch gets over this hurdle by rooting his third string quartet, attaca, in Beethoven’s first Razumovsky quartet, opus 59/1. The context works remarkably well.
Gerald Resch, 46, is a former music journalist embedded in Viennese music, both historic and modern. He works with ensembles as different as the period-instrument Concentus Musicus and the Aureum saxophone quartet. In creating attaca he had a period of immersion with the trendy, Frankfurt-based Aris Quartett, among the most accomplished on the circuit.
Resch’s citations of Beethoven are subliminal more than literal, but the mind absorbs them as a frame of reference on the attaca journey, like unlit milestones at night on a country lane. There is more darkness here than in Beethoven, but it is nonthreatening. The 22-minute span of attaca feels exactly right for its materials, just enough to leave you wanting more.
The Aris go on to give a carefree reading of the Razumovsky, worlds apart from the stressed-out, middle-aged, male performers I grew up with. Has string quartet playing got easier, or have the players just got more relaxed? Has a better gender balance helped? Whatever the cause, the Aris play Beethoven with sweeping flair and something close to insouciance. When COVID is over, I shall hear them live. Meantime, their Beethoven adagio sings like a Pentecostal nightingale.
To read more from Norman Lebrecht, subscribe to Slippedisc.com.
#LUDWIGVAN
Get the daily arts news straight to your inbox.
Sign up for the Ludwig van Daily — classical music and opera in five minutes or less HERE.
- LEBRECHT LISTENS | Two Releases Of Elgar Symphonies To Compare - April 19, 2024
- LEBRECHT LISTENS | Jordan Bak’s Cantabile For Viola Reveals The Neglected Instrument’s Beauty - April 12, 2024
- LEBRECHT LISTENS |David Robert Coleman & The Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra Reveal The Charms Of Walter Kaufmann - April 5, 2024
