Review By Grant Chu Covell, La Folia,March 2012
The Carducci bring freshness to well-worn Glass, tackling the first four as if Borodin or Brahms, reveling in the fundamentally expressive harmonies and deftly applying articulation in order to sustain interest. © 2012 La Folia Read complete review
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Review By David Rodríquez Cerdán, Scherzo,September 2011
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Review By Chris Waddington, The Times-Picayune (Nola.com),December 2010
If you’re a fan of Philip Glass, you’ve probably heard his string quartets in benchmark recordings by the Kronos Quartet, the group that commissioned several of these Minimalist classics. But don’t let Kronos keep you from buying the Carducci Quartet’s 2010 Naxos release, “Philip Glass: String Quartets Nos. 1–4.” The young British ensemble delivers muscular, athletic accounts that stand comfortably beside the edgy, “downtown” versions waxed by the foursome from San Francisco. For me, Kronos evokes the composer’s interest in electric keyboards and amplification; Carducci does something different, using its warm, closely knit ensemble sound to confirm the place of these quartets in the classical canon.
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Review By Notes,December 2010
Those whose only exposure to the music of Philip Glass has been through his celebrated work for stage and film may be taken aback by this recording of his first four string quartets. Familiar elements of his style are certainly present—the relentless unison arpeggiation; the clear, even adamant tonal centers; the rudimentary harmonic progressions—but they are scattered throughout these pieces rather than constant, or they appear in mutant form. The four quartets span a period of just over two decades, and their arrangement in the program is curious: Glass’s first quartet was written in 1966, while the influence of his teacher Nadia Boulanger was still fresh and he was experimenting with his compositional voice. It is clearly a work of protominimalism, filled with repetition and small motifs, yet at the same time its melodic content is stark and spiky and obviously informed by mid-century atonality. Although this piece helps to provide a useful context for his later quartets, it is for some reason featured third on the program, after the second quartet, from 1983 (a dour and brooding but thoroughly beautiful set of four movements written as interludes for a staging of the Samuel Beckett play Company) and the third, from 1985 (based on Glass’s score for a film about the life and suicide of writer Yukio Mishima). The final work on this disc is the most recent recent of the four, a 1989 composition subtitled “Buczak.” In this piece Glass’s particular brand of minimalism comes into most direct and explicit confrontation with the romantic masterworks of the string quartet form, with frankly uneven results—in the first movement the interaction between Glassian restraint and Schubertian emotion feels ham-handed, the simple ostinatos of 1970s minimalism crowded by swells of yearning chords. The second movement is contemplative and quite lovely, recalling Debussy in its dry abstraction; the third finds Glass drawing on a wide variety of influences to create a rich and satisfying pastiche. The playing of the Carducci Quartet is excellent throughout; they neither overplay the expressive passages nor exaggerate the dryness of the more minimal material.
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Review By Juan Berberana, Ritmo,December 2010
Frente a la edición de los cuartetos de Philip Glass (n. 1937) grabada por el Kronos (Nonesuch), esta edición del Carducci cuenta con la grabación del Cuarteto num.1 (que el Kronos no realizó), pero no así con su último Cuarteto num. 5. Se entiende mejor la opción del Kronos, ya que el Cuarteto num.1 es una obra de juventud, casi de aprendizaje (1966). Se agradece, de cualquier manera, esta edición ya que los cuartetos de cuerda forman parte de lo mejor del catálogo del americano (sobre todo los 3 últimos) y no está de más nuevas visiones de los mismos. La del Carducci se queda por debajo de la lectura del Kronos, al ser mucho menos enfática y quizás más académica. El Glass de los cuartetos necesita un punto de energía adicional, algo que el Kronos entiende muy bien. De cualquier manera esta edición conlleva una recomendación máxima. Quien no conozca los Cuartetos num. 3 o Núm.4 tiene aquí una oportunidad fantástica de adentrarse en el Glass de mayor talento y energía. Y quien quiera ir un poco más allá, que pruebe con la banda sonora completa de Mishima, en lugar de con los fragmentos que vienen recogidos en su Cuarteto num. 3.
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Review By Rob Haskins, American Record Guide,November 2010
This compares very favorably with previous recordings by the Smith Quartet on Signum (Sept/Oct 2008) and Kronos Quartet on Nonesuch (July/Aug 1995). Of course, I miss the fifth quartet, but perhaps the Carduccis are planning a follow-up release with the String Sextet (Michael Riesman’s arrangement of Symphony 3) and the Fifth Quartet (perhaps also with a new quartet or Glass’s violin sonata).
The Carduccis are young and vibrant— their repertoire embraces both the standard repertoire and new works, and so they play with a very rich sense of the string quartet tradition in their souls. Like the Smith Quartet, they project some of the intricate textures of Glass’s quartets better than the Kronos, and they also dig into the occasional dissonances of the music with greater gusto (as in Quartet 3:II).
The recorded sound seems more ambient than the Smiths; this works well for the strange, isolated figures in Quartet 1. In fact, the Carducci’s make a better case for this work, overall, than either the Smiths or the Duke Quartet (May/June 1994). When I compare this release to the Smiths, I find the latter preferable—but only by a little. (The main differences are owing to the slightly more refined sound of the Smith Quartet and their greater poise as interpreters.) But the Carduccis are a very close second, and Naxos’s prices, of course, are very competitive.
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Review By Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International,October 2010
With five string quartets to his name, this disc represents the bulk of Philip Glass’s contribution to the genre. The earliest, String Quartet No. 1, comes from the period just before Glass began exploring what we would recognise today as ‘true’ minimalism. Aspects of a minimalistic approach are beginning to crystallise however, related however more to the alternative scales and cyclical repetitions of Asian music, as well as the restricted use of material represented by John Cage. The result is a kind of rough-hewn Morton Feldman in miniature, each segment holding its own ‘universe in a grain of sand’, but still seeking a truly effective framework on which to hang and develop the ideas.
In the end, it was as much the framework which became the essence of the music which Glass was to be creating within a short space of time from the String Quartet No. 1, and with a period working and performing with his own ensemble’s energetic sound. The programme of this disc opens with the String Quartet No. 2, originally written as a set of four interludes for a stage production of Samuel Beckett’s poem ‘Company’. The first of these sees Glass at his most lyrically poignant, with the violin floating its few eloquent melodic notes over a gently undulating accompaniment. The quartet has a musical feel which can in general be compared with Glass’s 1983 opera Akhnaten, the second movement alternating moments of dramatically energetic and quieter more anticipatory ostinato. The third returns to the feel of the first, with a more restless feel, building to a brief but heavily portentous climax. The final movement has similar dynamic contrasts to the second, but mainly projects a feel of diffuse intensity—a handkerchief waved from the bridge of a diving submarine, purposeful and lost at the same time.
The String Quartet No. 3 also has extra-musical origins, having been made for a film about the remarkable Japanese writer Yukio Mishima. The entire film score included work for full orchestra, but extracting the string quartet sections to create a concert piece was a logical idea, as these moments went closest in association with the subject of the film and have their own sense of unity. The harmonies and character of the movements remind me most of Glass’s 1986 ‘Songs for Liquid Days’ album, though through the familiar rocking figurations and cyclical patterns the quartet music does have a more classically bound feel which is only partly to do with the medium. Most inventive is the third movement, Grandmother and Kimitake, which goes beyond the expected in both harmonies and rhythm, and much of the rest has a poignant feel which makes for a soothing and at times moving listening experience.
The longest and latest of the quartets on this disc, and the only one in three parts, the String Quartet No. 4 stands apart from Nos. 2 and 3 in being a pure concert piece. The work was a commission in memory o more....
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Review By Pwyll ap Siôn, Gramophone,September 2010
The Carduccis take a cool and entirely apt approach to Glass’s string quartets
Glass’s output as a whole often aspires to the condition of chamber music, even when writing for his own amplified ensemble of keyboards, winds and voices, or for large-scale media such as opera and film. It therefore comes as no surprise that when Glass’s musical language took on a more personal course during the 1980s, he turned to the expressive medium par excellence—the string quartet—to realise his new aesthetic and stylistic aims.
Three of the quartets featured on this disc—Nos 2–4—were written during the 1980s, and all take their affective cues from extramusical subject matter: the Second from Samuel Beckett’s solipsistic ruminations; the Third based on the life and tragic death of Japanese writer Yukio Mishima; and the Fourth in memory of downtown New York artist Brian Buczak.
All of which presents something of a conundrum for performers of this music: whether to imbue the darker tones of Glass’s quartets with the more open and impersonal minimalist style of the 1970s or to impart dramatic neo-romantic gestures and colorations. Past recordings have tended to go for the latter—especially the Kronos Quartet, who sometimes treat Glass’s music as if it were late Brahms. A more recent recording of the complete cycle by the highly rated Smith Quartet (Signum, 6/08) is more restrained by comparison but the Carducci Quartet have arguably taken their approach even further. By performing these works with an intense and focused detachment, the Carduccis allow the music simply to speak for itself. They also get it right on the only work which demands a degree of emotional intensity—the early, proto-minimalist String Quartet No 1—which, in its use of epigrammatic atonal cycles, sounds like Webern fragments looped over and over again.
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Review By The Strad,August 2010
By opening the disc with the Second Quartet, the Carducci has chosen to begin with the most readily accessible of Philip Glass’s five quartet scores. Created by combining four short interludes from a 1983 staging of Samuel Beckett’s prose-poem ‘Company’, it came at a time when Glass was fully immersed in his now familiar Minimalist style.The Third followed two years later and used music from the film documenting the life of the Japanese author Yukio Mishima. It’s strong and dramatic in content, and its weight and gravitas continue into the Fourth Quartet written in memory of the experimental artist Brian Buczak.For the First Quartet, we go back to 1966 and a time when Glass was still searching for a musical identity that would discard serialism. If he wasn’t quite successful in forging an individual voice, the two-movement score is still striking. Bringing these works to life requires a multitude of nuances and spotless intonation, and the young British-based Carducci Quartet flawlessly meets the challenge. The intricate web of sound throughout is rhythmically precise and crystal clear, with minute changes of dynamics unfailingly achieved. The recording is generous in the lower reaches, adding to Emma Denton’s richly toned cello.more....
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Review By Laima, WRUV Reviews,July 2010
Glass’s four string quartets on this CD are minimalist yet include a variety of melodies as historically quartets do. Play all!
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