COLORADO QUARTET RECORDINGS Beethoven | Schubert | Brahms | Cowell Quartets by HUSA, LADERMAN, POWELL Albany Records 259 Recorded in 1997 at Yale University CD cover art by John Martin We're proud of our reviews Fanfare Magazine | American Record Guide Philadelphia Enquirer Our CD of contemporary American music is very special to us, as we worked closely with all three composers. We recorded the album in Sprague Hall at the Yale School of Music in May, 1996. Ezra Laderman was Dean of the School of Music at that time, and arranged for us to use the hall, but Sprague was built at a time when street noise wasn't the problem it is today, and it's impossible to record there during peak traffic hours. We began at 10pm each night, hoping that by then all the people with loud cars would be at home. Even so, many a take was ruined by a honk or engine noise. STRING QUARTET No. 4, "POEMS" by KAREL HUSA Karel Husa wrote his Fourth String Quartet for us as part of a consortium commission from the National Endowment for the Arts. We gave the World Premiere of the work in the Fall of 1991 in Brno, Czech Republic, Professor Husa's native country. The warm reception that both the work and the composer received were overwhelming, to say the least. This Quartet is titled "Poems", but rather than being set to actual pieces of poetry, it is instead a collection of poetically-inspired musical images. Each of the six movements consists of a different technique or sound: Bells features many sustained, overlapping notes struck simultaneously with plucked tones; Sunlight is played entirely with harmonics, which create a glistening effect; Darkness uses quarter-tones and slides which smear between the notes, giving a murky, dense sound; Hope is a glorious extended cadenza for the cello; Wild Birds is the fastest movement, and contains flurried and freely-notated sections; Freedom features wonderful solos for the viola and cello, and draws the piece to a triumphant close. It is interesting to note that Professor Husa composed this piece during the so-called Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, where not one window was broken in the overturning of the government. The piece seems to us imbued with Czech nationalist pride, and we in turn are very proud to have such a piece to perform. STRING QUARTET No. 7 by EZRA LADERMAN When the Colorado Quartet won the Naumburg Award in April, 1983, part of the prize included the commissioning of a new quartet. We were lucky to be teamed up with the esteemed composer Ezra Laderman, who has remained a good friend ever since. His Seventh Quartet is the middle of a trilogy of works, with the Sixth and Eight Quartets completing the triad. We have played the Seventh Quartet throughout the world - it has always received acclaim wherever it's been heard. The work is in one continuous movement, with each section having its own motivic ideas. The themes for the entire piece are heard one after the other at the opening - a sort of Table of Contents, if you will. Aside from the upwards-reaching 4-note motive which forms the principal theme of the Quartet, the most striking musical idea is the death-march in the concluding section. Mr. Laderman has referred to this piece as being "in the midst of life"; his wife, upon hearing the first performance, exclaimed, with some consternation, "What was he thinking when he wrote that?!" STRING QUARTET (1982) by MEL POWELL We were first asked to learn Mel Powell's String Quartet for the La Jolla Festival in California, which wanted to feature music by living West Coast composers. Coincidentally, both Diane and Francesca attended the California Institute of the Arts, where Mel taught for many years, and so we also got invited to perform Mel's Quartet at the Kennedy Center on a concert which was organized by CalArts to honor the composer. The work was written under a consortium commission from the NEA, and it was first performed by the Sequoia Quartet. Our favorite comment about this piece comes from Mel himself, who said that at the beginning it sounds as if a closet door has been opened and all the contents have tumbled out onto the ground, and then the rest of the piece is spent putting everything back in order. Indeed, it is a complex piece to listen to, with its abstractions of melody and overlapping rhythms. Towards the end of the piece, a bee-bop fugue appears, and the listener is suddenly reminded of the years that Mel spent playing jazz in the Benny Goodman band. This recording stands as a fond farewell to Mel Powell, who passed away in the Spring of 1998. We'll miss you, Mel.