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Breve
Euclid Quartet
Afinat
The Breve Quartet has been in residence at Indiana College South Bend for sixteen years. Throughout that point they’ve recorded a variety of repertoire. Like so many ensembles, their catalog was placed on ice in the course of the pandemic, and their newest since 2017 for Afinat, Breve, returns with eleven miniatures in disparate types. Listeners are inspired to shuffle them to listen to in any order.
Miniatures are sometimes considered the fare of encores, however a full program of them means that small doesn’t imply insubstantial or merely flashy. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s C-minor Adagio and Fugue is a working example, with rigorously constructed counterpoint that reminds us of his possession of a duplicate of J.S. Bach’s Effectively-Tempered Clavier.
One other standout is Swish Ghost Rag, a transcription of considered one of William Bolcom’s well-known piano rags that the quartet performs jauntily. In an analogous pocket is their sleek rendition of George Gershwin’s Lullaby. Shostakovich’s Polka, From the Golden Age is a mischievous sendup of the favored dance, with deliberate “incorrect notes” and pizzicatos and glissandos lampooning the saccharine lushness of bourgeois tradition. One might think about all of them showing as a part of an up to date soundtrack for a movie of the silent period.
Quartettsatz by Franz Schubert options an uplifting theme offset by transitions rife with portentous diminished harmonies. Hugo Wolf’s Italian Serenade takes an archetypal kind and adorns it together with his attribute chromaticism. Though he’s greatest often called a member of the Second Viennese College of early 12-tone composers, Anton Webern’s Langsamer Satz is a reminder that he additionally wrote engaging tonal works. Christantemi is stuffed with the plangent melodies one additionally hears in Giacomo Puccini’s operas.
Metro Chabacano by Javier Álvarez recreates a trip on the Mexico Metropolis practice line with repeated chords for chugging and zooming melodies that depict the push of commuter journey. 4, For Tango written by the composer and grasp bandoneonist Dino Saluzzi, mixes the dance’s attribute rhythmic patterns with open-string chords and altissimo upward slides. If you’re listening straight by means of, Hector Villa-Lobos’ La Oración del Torero closes the disc with one other dose of conventional Latinx rhythms and modal tunes, interspersed with recitative-like melodic passages.
The Euclid Quartet performs in all the afore-mentioned, stylisitically disparate items with each technical and interpretive assuredness. Typically much less is extra, as evidenced by Breve.
-Christian Carey
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