This disc contains
some bold and innovative music and is
logically programmed.
Saariaho’s extremes
of texture, dynamics and sonority may
produce the most radical and ‘modern’
sounding music here, but she is the
first to admit the debt she owes pioneers
of the previous generation, two of whom
are featured alongside her here.
Nymphéa
is scored for string quartet and live
electronics which appear at specified
points, mainly taking the form of vocalised
sounds that have been ‘doctored’. These
moments are, in fact, the gentlest passages
in a piece that stretches the quartet
medium considerably. The screeching,
raging tempest of sound that Saariaho
unleashes on us at other times (as at
3’08) shows her IRCAM background and
formative training with Ferneyhough.
I remember volatile audience reaction
at one of her Huddersfield Contemporary
Music Festival concerts a couple of
seasons ago, where one of her best early
string quartet pieces, Lichtbogen
(1985/6) was performed. Nymphéa
follows on logically from that work,
showing a marked maturity in use of
spectral effects and integration of
ideas. It’s not easy listening, but
does repay effort and is full of astonishing
surprises.
By contrast, the quartet
by one of her great avant-garde predecessors
is simple, moving and gentle, almost
beatific, by comparison. This is quite
early Cage, very much discovering his
Dada and Zen influences. The markings
of the four sections say it all: Quietly
Flowing Along: Slowly Rocking:
Nearly Stationary and finishing
with a Quodlibet. This is music
that prefigures the softer minimalism
of Glass whilst nodding in the direction
of Pärt’s sacred simplicity – pretty
far-looking for 1949! The dedication
to Lou Harrison is entirely appropriate.
It’s also good to see
a piece by another influential but scandalously
under-represented composer, Boulez’s
great friend Bruno Maderna. He is possibly
best known for his 1950s Darmstadt summer
school lectures, thus providing another
neat and surely intentional link to
Saariaho, who herself has acknowledged
the debt to Girard Grisey’s Darmstadt
sessions. The Maderna quartet is not
quite as frighteningly extreme as the
booklet writer suggests (and nowhere
as dissonant as the Saariaho) but coming
from 1955 it does betray those typically
strident, confrontationally intellectual
traits of so much music from that period,
where post-Webern ‘total serialism’
ruled. The dedication is to his great
friend and countryman Berio, with whom
he founded Studio di Fonologia in Milan
and also makes perfect sense when you
hear the piece.
Mention here must be
of the performances by the Cikada Quartet,
made up of three siblings and a close
friend. The rapport shows and even the
densest, most difficult of passages
is played with a lucidity and unanimity
that is thrilling. The recording, as
one might expect from Manfred Eicher’s
ECM source, is superb. I’ve enjoyed
a lot of ECM’s New Series, where imaginative
planning is allied to top-notch musicianship
and sound quality, and this is up there
with the best of them.
Tony Haywood
Cikada String Quartet 
