Avalon String Quartet

Matthew Quayle String Quartets Nos. 1-3

February 25th 2019

Reviewed by Filippo Focosi from Kathodik

The young American composer Matthew Quayle, born in 1976, is part of that group of authors who have left behind the disputes between avant-garde and neo-romantic, feeling finally free to exploit as they please, or to bend to their own expressive needs, whatever technique, style or material that the variegated contemporary music scene is able to offer. That this can lead to excellent pages is well evidenced by String Quartets No.1 (2003-2005). The expressive heart of the composition is the articulate original Andante, permeated by a straight sing-song, sometimes veined with nostalgia, which unfolds with admirable fluidity even in the presence of polyphonically dense and rhythmically lively passages. The following three movements (joke, adagio and finale), written two years after the first, contrast in part with the idyllic atmosphere created there, as if to represent, as the author suggests, the transition from youthful innocence to ‘adulthood. Eclectic stylistic and poetic reality are at the base of the other two Quayle string quartets. The oxymoronic title of the second quartet, Sweet Insanity (2006), in a single movement of about ten minutes duration, reveals the central idea of ​​the composition: the contrast between sharp lines and dissonant harmonies on the one hand and moments of more relaxed lyricism on the other, with a groove of blues matrix to act as a glue, as if to suggest the possibility of capturing persuasive and fascinating aspects even in the chaos and danger of everyday life in a metropolis like New York. The opposite structure is the String Quartets No.3 (2016), divided into thirteen short movements inspired by the phenomenon of zapping music, or more generally the compulsive tendency to change that characterizes our era. The listener, however, is not assailed by any randomizing frenzy, so captivating and well turned these miniatures, which delight us with baroque quotations, allusions to pop, touching waltzes, acrobatic classic-modernist contaminations and explosions raids in the bluegrass. Amazing evidence of the Avalon String Quartet, excellent audio quality of the recording. Without any doubt, a CD not to be missed.