Lachenmann: Works for String Quartet by Quatuor Diotima

Review: Quatuor Diotima - Lachenmann: Works for String Quartet

While German experimental composer Helmut Lachenmann is a pianist, his three string quartets are some of his best-known and most frequently recorded works. Quatuor Diotima's new recording, Lachenmann: Works for String Quartet, provides a subtly new perspective which flatters the group's excellent performances.

The 89-year-old composer writes rigorous pieces that focus on texture and sound over conventional melody, harmony, or meter. Performers interact with instruments through an array of extended techniques that minimally evoke an instrument's conventional palette. His compositions evolve continuously, with deep intellectual rigor but few hooks to pull the listener into the morphing field of sounds.

Lachenmann wrote his initial string quartet, "No. 1, Gran Torso" in 1971, and it pushes even further than, for example, Xenakis's "ST-4/1,080262" from a decade earlier.  Where the Xenakis piece weaves together conventionally pitched sounds and jarring textures, "Gran Torso" builds its throughline solely through its array of radical, creative sounds. Two more string quartets, "No. 2, Reigen seliger Geister" from 1989 and "No. 3, Grido" from 2001, follow similar approaches to texture and structure.

Recording these three works has become a showpiece for string quartets to exhibit their skill with demanding, experimental music. Both Arditti Quartet and JACK Quartet have taken  relatively traditional approaches to capturing their instruments with room and space. In contrast, Quatuor Diotima recorded their scraping and scratching sounds with an intimacy that's more common in experimental jazz and improvised music. The unusual textures feel incredibly present and close, without the sense of surrounding air that's associated with a standard string quartet recording.

The stark sounds that Lachenmann has written are perceptible with an intimate detail that the earlier recordings did not seek. Quatuor Diotima, who has worked closely with Lachenmann in the past, clearly understands the level of precision needed for this technical approach to succeed and perform with clarity. Works for String Quartet emphasizes the overt modernity of these pieces, without abandoning their place in the string quartet tradition. © Steve Silverstein/Qobuz