12 GOTTA HAVE Chamber Music Recordings

In addition to the Bartok and Shostakovitch quartets, other 20th-century string quartet literature that gets my vote includes the Ferneyhough quartets, the Carter quartets (nos. 2 and 5 are maybe good places to start), and the String Quartet in Four Parts by John Cage. The last-mentioned is a lovely piece, more accessible than you might expect from Cage. The Carter and Ferneyhough are thornier, less accessible I suppose, although there's an immediacy of gesture and a rigor and energy that draw you in if you're open to these qualities. They're beatifully crafted (if not conventionally beautiful) pieces that reward repeated listening. (Earlier in the century of course there's Berg's Lyric Suite for String Quartet, there's the sets of very short pieces by Webern ... I'm less keen on the Schoenberg quartets actually.)

Well, every time I work out a description of one thing I think of three more to include as well. I think narrowing it down to just 12 is impossible, so I'll just stop.

(But not without mentioning the very long, meditative pieces Morton Feldman wrote for his regular collaborators at the University of Buffalo -- the best of all being Crippled Symmetry.)

My sense is that, of Carter's string quartets, No. 1 is perhaps the best place to start (though No. 5 might also be a good choice) -- it's the longest, but it's the easiest to connect to other quartet music (like Beethoven's late quartets), and has the most accessible "tunes".

Of course, if you like solo piano music (which isn't generally what's meant by "chamber music") then get the complete works of Debussy ASAP, preferably as played by Pascal Rogé...

Krzysztof Penderecki - String Quartet No 2

Pierre Boulez - Le Marteau Sans Maitre

those seem pretty basic, but essential i guess...

"Movemur et Sumus III" and "Memorial/Alternances" are good.

sundar: is there any particurlar recording of pierrot lumaire that you'd go for?

Just to say something different however:
- Mozart: Clarinet Quintet
- Mozart: "Kegelstadt" Trio
- Schubert: String Quintet in C (plus some of the quartets are great)
- Dvorak - String Quartet ("American" - can't remember no. offhand)
- Webern - all of his chamber music
- Michael Tippett - the later String Quartets
- George Crumb - Black Angels and some other workd

The Pablo Casals recording of Beethoven's Archduke Trio is my pick.

Yes.

would solo piano be considered chamber music?

No.

Dmitry Shostakovich - "Complete String Quartets" with the Borodin String Quartet. Some of the most colorful and beautiful music ever. The 15th string quartet is absolutely heartbreaking.

Sofiya Gubaydulina - In the mirror. Featuring her gorgeous Quintet for piano and strings. The third movement is gloriously mournful.

Arnold Schönberg - Verklärte Nacht performed by the Hollywood String Quartet. Beautiful performance of Schönberg's most thoroughly beautiful piece.

Some GOTTA haves from the last few years I thought of straight away. I'll post the highlights but these recordings have (unless I say so) a 100% hit score and work quite well as albums although I don't play the whole thing start-to-finish.

Chaya Czernowin's excellent 'Afatism' on mode - not only for its title track but also especially the excellent string sextet 'dam sheon hachol'.

Benedict Mason's disc on Bridge w/the very forceful and agile 'Double Concerto'; his 'self-referential-songs..' contains surprising riffage from unexpected, well-timed, places, and makes me wish he'd spent his lifetime composing more of them. Instead, its been 'The Lighthouses of England and Wales' and these orchestral works that take into account an obessive detail of concert hall acoustics which will never ever (well surely!) translate to a disc. And a disc has been released earlier this year but I'm not confident.

Jason Eckhardt 'Out of Chaos' on mode. The cut to the piano solo on 'After Serra' (gotta check but no time right now) is a favourtite moment.

Richard Emsley and his 'Flow forms' disc on metier can range from the Feldmanesque of 'Helter Skelter' to the savagery of his 'Juniper Tree'. All mixed in with solo piano works.

Emsley dedicates one of his piano works to Michale Finnissy and his string Quartets disc (again, on Metier) is excellent throughout. My personal fave moment must be the first 5 seconds of 'Nobody's Jig' that sucks you right in for the next 20 mins.

Franco Donatoni 'Spiri, Fili..' etc. Apart from the early work these are all great (which still has something to recommend as you can hear the evolution to his later style but that peculiar facility for clear instrumental writing isn't quite there). In an always changin' list, he would probably be my single favourite composer these days.

I'll pick six more later..

John Cage - I oughta to give two as one. 'Europera 5' and 'Roaratorio'. The former has a pianist, two sopranos and two tape/record players. The latter is for voice, tape and four Irish Fiddlers and is one of the best examples of a patently used folk music anywhere. These ideas have very long legs.

Ullmann's 'A Catalogue of sounds', something I've talked about elsewhere.

Mattias Spahlinger 'Extension' for violin/piano. Like the Ullmann, terrific use of so-called instrumental concrete. Quotations crash in to instant effect.

Ferneyhough's 'chamber music' and especially 'Incipts'. Recently glanced at a review for another chamber disc of his w/two versions of 'Funerailles' for harp and string sextet.

There is a disc of works by Klaus K Hubler that has this excellent composition called 'Arie Dissolute' (for viola and small ensemble) that I'd like to get my hands on. Diff to give a hard-and-fast description but its an excellent concentration of a partic style. I'd say half of it ends up sounding as if Feldman attempted to write some harder riffs but couldn't get there. Or something.

(Obviously you've gotta have a taste for a particular style of composing for chamber developed recently (post-1970) to get anything out of this and there are differences within and particular personal details, etc. Partly just trying to organize what I know of this, too.)

Partly to look for any nu-recommends but also to highlight this excellentrecital

pavel hass string quartet no. 2. entartete!