String Quartets / String Trio / Khoom

Scelsi (Artist), Hirayama (Artist), Arditti String Quartet (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 9, 2002)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Naive
• ASIN: B00005V52N
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #653,331 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #39 in Music > Classical > Historical Periods > Modern, 20th, & 21st Century > Composers > Scelsi, Giacinto

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. String Quartet No.1 (also version for string orchestra): 1. Quasi lento - Agitato - Molto sostenuto ed intenso - Con esaltazione esas

2. String Quartet No.1 (also version for string orchestra): 2. Molto lento, quasi funebre - Pesante

3. String Quartet No.1 (also version for string orchestra): 3. Scherzo

4. String Quartet No.1 (also version for string orchestra): 4. Moderato - Deciso - Dolcissimo

5. Trio for strings: 1st Movement

6. Trio for strings: 2nd Movement

7. Trio for strings: 3rd Movement

8. Trio for strings: 4th Movement

9. String Quartet No.2: 1st Movement

10. String Quartet No.2: 2nd Movement

See all 13 tracks on this disc

Disc: 2

1. Khoom, for soprano, horn, string quartet & percussion: 1st Episode

2. Khoom, for soprano, horn, string quartet & percussion: 2nd Episode

3. Khoom, for soprano, horn, string quartet & percussion: 3rd Episode

4. Khoom, for soprano, horn, string quartet & percussion: 4th Episode

5. Khoom, for soprano, horn, string quartet & percussion: 5th Episode

6. Khoom, for soprano, horn, string quartet & percussion: 6th Episode

7. Khoom, for soprano, horn, string quartet & percussion: 7th Episode

8. String Quartet No.3: Avec un grande tendresse

9. String Quartet No.3: L'appel de l'esprit: dualisme, ambivalence, conflit (drammatico)

10. String Quartet No.3: L'âme se réville... (con transparenza)

See all 14 tracks on this disc

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Major Quartet Cycle, July 31, 2002

By 

Christopher Forbes "weirdears" (Brooklyn,, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: String Quartets / String Trio / Khoom (Audio CD)

Just when you thought that you knew everything that a string quartet could do, along comes Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi to turn everything upside down. These works are inspiring, perhaps the most important string quartet cycle to be written in the second half of the 20th century. (The Britten and Shostakovitch certainly are contenders as well, but they are musically from another era.) Scelsi's voice is well developed here, and his musical obsessions are well served by the string quartet medium. A stroll through these pieces is to watch the development of a composer and his musical world.

The first Quartet is the odd one out here. Written in 1944, it shows the influence of Schonberg, Dallapicola and other important expressionist composers. It is set in four movements which suggest the traditional quartet form. And yet, already many of Scelsi's mature gestures can be found in the work. Listen to the obsessive chords that open the first movement. The almost long silences between chords in the almost motiveless second movement, The alternations between single note lines and chords in the third movement. The stunner here is the last movement, where Scelsi moves into lines of unabashed tonal beauty, recalling the best of the past. Echos of Beethoven's Op132 and even farther back into the Renaissance can be found in the flowing lines.

Scelsi went through a much publisized nervous breakdown in the early 50s brought about, he said, by his involvement with the twelve note system. When he returned to composition, he began to create a series of works based on the properties of single tones. Using techniques of added resonance, he created a series of piano pieces that show the initial development of his mature style. But soon he found he was more interested in microtonal variations on the single tone and he turned to other instrumental combinations to work out his ideas. Of those combinations, the most important was undoubtedly the strings.

The String Trio is a product of this first experimental period. It is the starkest work on the CD. Each of it's four movements explores a different pitch. Variation is created only by pitch and timbral variations such as microtonal glissandi, vibrato, sul ponticello, tremelo and the like. The only exception to this starkness is found in the third movement, were a secondary tonal pole sets up the basic semblances of harmony.

The Second, Third and Fourth Quartets all develop this obsession with tone more fully. In each, the material becomes increasingly more complex. Though the single tone is always present, it often slowly slides up to a new pitch. And other pitches reinforce the harmonic overtones through techniques of added resonance. In the fourth quartet there is even some material that leans toward the melodic. However, concepts such as melody and harmony are really obsolete in Scelsi's work. All notes used in his pieces can really be looked upon as colorations of the basic tone rather than true harmony or melody.

Khoom shows some of Scelsi's variety. The work is scored for wordless soprano, strings, horn and percussion. The work has a ceremonial quality, as does most of Scelsi's vocal work. The percussion parts even show the influence of Sufi drumming styles. But the interest in the single tone is never far away, even in this music.

The final work on the CD is Scelsi's 5th Quartet. This is an astounding work, limited in it's material and powerful in it's impact. The work is based on a simple idea, a cluster chord, introduced by left hand pizzacato and trailing off into a pianissimo. This basic shape is repeated throughout the entire 9 plus minutes of the quartet. Variety is created through subtle changes in tone color and in the composition of the clusters. The overall effect is like the chanting of a sacred syllable in Hindu practice. You find your own breathing paralleling the sound on the CD. This is really less traditional music and more of an experience.

The performances on this CD are expert. The Arditti quartet has a long history of association with Scelsi. Irvine Arditti even helped Scelsi create some of his solo violin works. Michiko Hirayama is the voice for whom Khoom was written. Either you like it or you hate it, but her abilities are written into this piece.

If you are curious about the music of Scelsi, this CD is a great place to start. The Quartet cycle spans most of his career and shows his extrodinary development and the diversity that he can wrench out of simple materials. if you are a fan of the European avant-garde, or a person with open ears, it's well worth the money.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Writhing Center of Sound, August 21, 2003

By 

Phil Avetxori - See all my reviews

This review is from: String Quartets / String Trio / Khoom (Audio CD)

The first time I heard of Giancinto Scelsi, he was mentioned as as being famous for writing pieces that used only one note. As a novice to avant/experimental music, I was eagerly gorging myself with busy music packed with event, revelling in abrupt juxtaposition and unlikely hybrids. There was no room on my plate for the ascetic and the single-minded, so checking out Scelsi was low on my list of musical priorities. Now that my ears have been tuned to distinguish fine subtleties in sound, these pulsating singularities seem far from spartan. The key to appreciating this music is to listen to the inside of the sound. There's no forward motion or thematic development to be had here. Scelsi's music travels without moving. It's Leibnizian, in a way, a monad drawn within itself, projecting the sonic pseudopods of its internal logic as the entirety of its reality. Although, with the exception of the first quartet, all of these compositions are indeed comprised of a single note, Scelsi discovers an amazing amount of flexibility within this most restrictive of musical parameters. Now, I'm no expert on tunings, but this is the most subtle, and ultimately most affecting use of microtonality I've ever heard. In the allegreto movement of the 3rd quartet, in particular, the subtle throb from a rich, tempered note to the alien drone of a skewed tonality is breathtaking.It simultaneously evokes the centered calm of meditation, and the sublime expanse of a desert landscape. The 4th quartet, written a year later, both concentrates the piece into a more tightly packed form, and refines the microtonal and timbral subtleties. The further restrictions on development-in-time are compensated for with a wealth of new textures and overtones. Over twenty years later, Scelsi's 5th quartet (his final compositon) weaves the tiny internal vacillations into a surging mesh. The composer's personal soundworld has been thoroughly mastered, allowing him greater freedom to subtly vary the internal form of the variegated sound tissue.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Interior of Sound, January 31, 2007

By 

Leopold Bloom (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: String Quartets / String Trio / Khoom (Audio CD)

Several years ago, I conceived of an exaggeration of minimalism, paring down the inessential until one arrived at a composition consisting of a single note. Unbenknownst to me at the time, Giacinto Scelsi had already explored the potential of this approach, achieving interest and "development" through microtones, octaves, and other methods.

Deceptively simple in description, the wrong execution can result in monotony. This is apparent in a recording I have of the "Quattro Pezzi per Orchestra" by the Ensemble Integration Saarbrücken on CPO. The pieces go nowhere, and the slight variations in tone serve only to call attention to what is missing - namely, tempo, and, unfortunately, other notes.

None of that is in evidence on this recording by the Arditti Quartet. I cannot explain how tension is built and released, nor how monotony is avoided - but these performances are successful while the aforementioned ones are not. The five quartets, despite having been written over a period spanning 40 years, were described by Alex Ross in a New Yorker article as a unified composition. Perhaps the Arditti players approached them in that way, thereby achieving a level of integration impossible if the pieces are performed as unique, disconnected works.

This is an altogether remarkable recording, and the liner notes, especially the essay by Harry Halbreich, are on a level rarely seen in the typical CD.