Harrison Birtwistle: Complete String Quartets may suggest a large oeuvre, but there are just two quartets of approximately 30 minutes in length that were composed late in the composer's career. This tardy arrival to the genre can be explained by Birtwistle's decades-long preoccupation with his theater pieces, or his preference for composing music for wind and percussion instruments, but the fact remains that he eventually turned to the string quartet to make major statements. String Quartet: The Tree of Strings (2007) is ...
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Harrison Birtwistle: Complete String Quartets may suggest a large oeuvre, but there are just two quartets of approximately 30 minutes in length that were composed late in the composer's career. This tardy arrival to the genre can be explained by Birtwistle's decades-long preoccupation with his theater pieces, or his preference for composing music for wind and percussion instruments, but the fact remains that he eventually turned to the string quartet to make major statements. String Quartet: The Tree of Strings (2007) is the opener of the program, and the austere music grows out of a quiet opening of harmonics and tremolandos that generate clusters, quickly interrupted by passionate solo outbursts and startling ensemble glissandos. The work takes many dramatic turns, and sometimes the angular counterpoint becomes gratingly dissonant and complicated, but the general tone of the work is intospective and its argumentation is largely spare and abstract. The second piece on the disc, 9 Movements for String...
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Add this copy of Complete String Quartets to cart. $21.00, like new condition, Sold by Streetlight_Records rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Santa Cruz, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2012 by Aeon.