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Michael NYMAN (b 1948) |
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Nyman’s three Quartets date from a five-year period – 1985-90 – and owe their existence to a disparate variety of circumstances. No 1 was dedicated to the memory of Thurston Dart, Nyman’s teacher at King’s College London; Dart had given him an edition of Bull’s keyboard works and Nyman has repaid the gesture with a work of strength, ingenuity and affection. He employs Bull’s variations on "Walsingham" as a means by which to enact what Nyman terms conflict between it and the more hidden material from Schoenberg’s Second Quartet. A series of variational procedures are followed, divisions marked by figure numbers, running from B to L, each separately tracked on this CD. Fig C for example is delightfully affectionate; Nyman’s gentle evocation of Bull’s figure full of charm and the succeeding passage is the height of expressivity. Fig G is an embodiment of Nymanesque conjunctions and contradictions, rhythmic and otherwise and H features the slow but unmistakable emergence of a 1960s pop song, embedded in his chugging rhythms, which is itself apposite parody as the Bull was itself based on a popular song. Strangely, perhaps, I was reminded of Janacek in J and K, Nyman embodying something of the same kinetic energy and driving impulse that informs the Czech composer’s own Quartets. Fig L, the final section, is also the longest, a moving and eloquent summation and a just conclusion to this attractive, playful and intelligent work of tripartite associations – to Dart, to the idea of a freely moving and associative quartet and to the Arditti Quartet, commissioners of the work and champions of Nyman’s music. |
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