This SACD hybrid will play on any Super Audio CD player and standard CD player.
The Arditti are surely the perfect interpreters of Jonathan Harvey's chamber works, unfussily accommodating the requirements of a composer whose directions involve playing certain sections in masculine or feminine personalities, and noting "hot" and "cold" chord distinctions.
Here, they manage to depict both Harvey's development through four String Quartets spanning a quarter-century, and the sustained focus of his style. The String Quartet No 1 from 1977 remains a remarkable piece, progressing from quiet smearings of gossamer glissandi, through more animated passages of angular, spiky flurries, reaching a feverish climax of spluttering pizzicato before resolving into a sort of brittle acquiesecence. |