Pēteris Vasks - String Quartets Nos. 1, 3 & 4 (Spīķeru String Quartet)

Information

Composer: Pēteris Vasks

• (01-05) String Quartet No. 4
• (06-08) String Quartet No. 1
• (09-12) String Quartet No. 3

Spīķeru String Quartet
Marta Spārnina, violin
Antti Kortelainen, violin
Ineta Abakuka, viola
Eriks Kiršfelds, cello

Date: 2016
Label: Wergo

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Review

THE STRAD RECOMMENDS

Pēteris Vasks knows what he wants to say in these consoling quartets. Some have criticised the Latvian’s music for its lightness of material. But in these focused conversations, Vasks’s idiom is both happy and effective with the minimal material the composer bestows on it.

The works here span three decades but there’s a consistency of approach. In the First Quartet (1977) we hear the composer offsetting tortured, frantic statements with a strained, slow chorale. He does the same in the Fourth Quartet (1999), though the overarching design in this piece, with its giant, transcendent final ‘Meditation’, is more satisfying. The Third Quartet (1995), with its nature noises, distinctive Latvian folk dance and tense Adagio, links the two. (The previous volume on WER 7329-2 has the Second and Fifth quartets.)

The Spīķeru Quartet is on the ball when it comes to Vasks’s quartet hallmarks: distinctive textural lightness, melodies that need a combination of strength and vulnerability and fragile unisons (the last are particularly well served here by the players’ sparing use of vibrato). Most of all, the ensemble knows absolutely when to tense up and when to loosen off – when to close the circle and when to open it gregariously outwards. The sound is perfect, combining proximity and detail with the depth and resonance of the room.

-- Andrew Mellor, The Strad

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Pēteris Vasks (born 16 April 1946 in Aizpute, Latvia) is a Latvian composer. He trained as a violinist and a double-bass player and played in several Latvian orchestras before entering the State Conservatory in Vilnius in Lithuania to study composition with Valentin Utkin. He started to become known outside Latvia in the 1990s, when Gidon Kremer started championing his works and now is one of the most influential and praised European contemporary composers. Vasks's compositions incorporate archaic, folklore elements from Latvian music with the language of contemporary music.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C4%93teris_Vasks
https://en.schott-music.com/shop/autoren/peteris-vasks

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Spīķeru String Quartet

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