Neuwirth Chamber Music - Contemporary Classical Ensemble Pieces for Performances, Concerts & Music Study | Perfect for Musicians, Students & Classical Music Lovers

Olga Neuwirth (b. 1968) attracted a stellar cast of musicians to perform these pieces, composed from 1995-2000 and recorded by Kairos in 2001. I was initially under the mistaken impression that this was an entire disc of string quartets by the great Arditti Quartet, and so I was disappointed when I found that only the first and last of six pieces are played by the quartet, the other four featuring smaller forces.Over time, since first hearing this 2005 release in 2008, I have not consistently heard the musicality in Neuwirth's constructions, but I have come to appreciate most of it. The opening quartet is "Akroate Hadal," which begins with novel sounds produced by strings prepared with paperclips and clamps. It is a fascinating piece, continued in the shorter, closing quartet "settori," which is built with compressed material from the earlier quartet."Quasare/Pulsare" is an attractive duet played by Irvine Arditti on violin and Nicolas Hodges on piano that uses feedback from the piano strings to produce wave-like movements suggestive of the title image. "?risonanze!" for Viola d'amore, played by Garth Knox, features not only prepared strings, but oddly tuned strings, to produce novel and compelling sounds. "incidendo/fluido" for piano and CD-player is Hodges playing prepared strings in a restricted range, with a CD-player placed inside the piano playing "the overtone-free, electronically generated sounds of an Ondes Martenot." This is another successful sonic experiment.The one piece that I have not come around to is "...ad auras...in memoriam H." for two violins, played by Irvine Arditti and Graeme Jennings, and a wooden drum, played by Rohan de Saram (the cellist of the Arditti Quartet). Here I still find a lack of musicality, an ugliness, as the violins play out of tune with one another, punctuated with loud sawing and banging.*** *** ***Olga Neuwirth has come a long way since these radical works, now enjoying great success with an opera based on Virginia Woolf's "Orlando."