Nonesuch 79111-2

PETER SCULTHORPE: STRING QUARTET NO. 8
1. Con dolore 2:59
2. Risoluto 3:50
3. Con dolore 3:00
4. Con precisione 1:57
5. Con dolore 1:55

AULIS SALLINEN: STRING QUARTET NO. 3
6. Some Aspects of Peltoniemi Hintrik’s Funeral March 14:05

PHILIP GLASS: COMPANY
7. I 2:22
8. II 1:34
9. III 1:48
10. IV 2:09

CONLON NANCARROW: STRING QUARTET
11. Allegro molto 2:23
12. Andante moderato 3:29
13. Prestissimo 5:15

JIMI HENDRIX
14. Purple Haze (Arranged by Steve Riffkin)

For the Kronos Quartet, the music of today is an explosion of varied sounds, each with its own intriguing voice, some bearing messages that until recently might not have been welcome inside the concert hall.

Philip Glass writes nothing dissonant. Company seems not so much modern as neo-romantic; its drenching melancholy makes it a prime example of his current, often overtly emotional style. But his compositional method is still extraordinarily pure. The piece consists of transformations of a single phrase; the transformations begin right at the start. We hear very little -and in the first and last movements none at all— of the rhetoric we’d expect in less minimal music: introductions, say, or transitions, or the stretches of comparative relaxation that in a rigorous older form like a fugue would be called “episodes”. The four movements of this piece began as incidental music for a 1983 production of Samuel Beckett’s play Company (hence the title of the piece) by the New York experimental theater group Mabou Mines. As a unified composition they fit together remarkably well, and almost in traditional ways: the third movement, for instance, functions just as a slow movement might in Mahler or Beethoven, and the fourth is hard not to hear as a finale.

— Gregory Sandow

Kronos Quartet: David Harrington, violin. John Sherba, violin. Hank Dutt, viola. Joan Jeanrenaud, cello.

Produced by Thomas Frost. Recorded June 1985 at the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, NYC. Engineer: John Newton. Digital Editing: E. Amelia Rogers. Mastering: Robert C. Ludwig. Executive Producer: Robert Hurwitz.

Cover Photograph: Jan Staller. Art Direction and Design: Carin Goldberg.

Company Published by Dunvagen Music Publishers, Inc. New York (ASCAP). © 1986 Nonesuch Records.

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COMPOSITIONS:
String Quartet No. 2 (Company)

RECORDINGS:
Kronos Quartet Performs Philip Glasson Nonesuch