Alvin Singleton
Alvin Singleton forwards this review of his new recording by the Momenta Quartet, "Four String Quartets":
This
essential new recording features New York’s Momenta Quartet surveying
each of Alvin Singleton’s string quartets, which span 42 years—1967 to
2019, the last of which this ensemble commissioned for its 15th
anniversary. Each of these neatly contained works eschew the sort of
conventional structures works for this configuration usually employ.
Instead, they tell beautifully unfolding stories, like a sonic road trip
past quietly evolving landscapes. The earliest piece, “String Quartet
No. 1,” is unsurprisingly the most traditional-sounding entry, with
elaborately detailed contrapuntal scaffolding containing elegant
passages that toggle between bittersweet romanticism, knotty pizzicato,
and slaloming lines of emotional ambiguity. “Secret Desire to Be Black,”
commissioned by the Kronos Quartet in
1988, cycles through repeating sequences marked by subtly shifting
change, building into a strident fury released by a needling violin
figure and a sudden calm, slowly winding down into unexpected serenity.
My favorite work is “Some We Can” from 1994—an homage to the singer
Marian Anderson—which offers a thrilling rollercoaster ride of slashing
high-velocity lines. A head-snapping descent into an ominous stillness
heralds the return of even more thrilling locomotion, with sustained
tones and lyric swells following later. Singleton’s sense of scale and
proportion are remarkable. “Hallelujah Anyhow” engages in a similarly
jagged, wildly dynamic experience.
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