The Adventures of Hippocrates

Armando Anthony (Composer), John Harbison (Composer), Marc Neikrug (Composer), Orion String Quartet (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Orion String Quartet
• Composer: Armando Anthony, John Harbison, Marc Neikrug
• Audio CD (April 18, 2006)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Koch Int'L Classics
• ASIN: B000CQO1AW
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #486,877 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

These three works were commissioned for the Orion Quartet by the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival where the group is in residence, in collaboration with the summer festivals at La Jolla and Caramoor. Though the composers were born within one decade, their musical language is entirely different. Corea's title piece is a "serious" work rooted in his jazz background and also influenced by 20th-century styles. Its five contrasting movements include a lilting, nostalgic Waltz, a plaintive lament and a fleet, scurrying run-around; there are jazzy syncopations, irregular rhythms, and sound effects like slap bass pizzicati.  What Hippocrates has to do with it is not explained. Neikrug's Piano Quintet explores "intervallic tensions." Its single movement is divided into sections of different lengths, character, mood, texture, and emotional content, building to climaxes of varying intensity and agitation. Punctuated by numerous deceptive endings, it seems rather long. Harbison's four-movement Quartet is structurally the most conventional but harmonically the most "modern" of these works. The cello and first violin dominate a swiftly-changing texture of sustained chords, singing lines, unisons, eerie whispers, sharp short notes, running passages, sound effects and charged silences. The Orion Quartet, renowned for its technical ease, tonal homogeneity, musical unanimity and versatility, plays these works with its usual beautiful warm, vibrant sound, security, passion, and stylistic empathy. Neikrug joins the group as pianist in his Quintet.   --Edith Eisler

Product Description

No Description Available.
Genre: Classical Music
Media Format: Compact Disk
Rating:
Release Date: 18-APR-2006

See all Editorial Reviews

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Quartet Music, December 21, 2009

By 

bruggepp (Belgique) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Adventures of Hippocrates (Audio CD)

As a string quartet lover, I found this a great addition to the quartet repertoire. I bought the CD because of the Harbison fourth (having already the first three), but after having listened I was very much impressed by both "The Adventures of Hippocrates" by Chick Corea, and by the Neikrug Piano Quartet.
Bravo for The Orion String Quartet, and for American Chamber Music in General