What should have been a programme of UK premieres featuring both the Arditti and the JACK Quartets, including two octets for both playing together, became an appearance by the Ardittis alone when hurricane Sandy prevented the New York-based group from flying the Atlantic. It's the kind of thing that the unfazable Ardittis take in their stride; alongside quartets by Hans Abrahamsen and Rebecca Saunders that they had been due to play, they simply added two more, by James Clarke and Wolfgang Rihm. They played all four works with the almost casual brilliance that is their trademark.
Rihm's was his 13th Quartet, which the Ardittis introduced to the repertoire last year. It's a massive span of music, which gives the impression of having been hewn from an even bigger mass of material, and hurtles along for almost half an hour, nearly coming to rest occasionally on almost conventional cadences, or finessing the thematic material into a schmaltzy melodic line. Clarke's 10-minute First Quartet, too, hardly pauses for breath, though from time to time the four instruments do coalesce in a shared gesture, and the whole effect is impressively controlled.
The commission for Abrahamsen's Fourth Quartet has taken 20 years to bear fruit. It's a wonderfully elusive piece made up of two interlocking pairs of movements, with the second of each pair the dark shadow of the first: the glassy harmonics of the opening movement are brought down to earth in the pizzicatos of the third, while the second's fast, wispy textures take more solid form in the folksy melodies of the finale. Saunders' Fletch turns out not to have been named after the hero of the 70s sitcom Porridge, as I'd secretly hoped, but from a term in archery. The piece is essentially a study in harmonic trills and swooping, soaring glissandos, regularly punctuated by fierce attacks; its sounds are striking, but don't add up to much. Porridge might have been a better starting point after all.
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