JOHNSTON, BEN: String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, 4 & 9 CD (NW 80637)

Spotted this in the Forced Exposure new releases email on this wet grey morning, I always wanted to here these:

NEW WORLD RECORDS

JOHNSTON, BEN: String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, 4 & 9 CD (NW 80637) 14.00
Performed by Kepler Quartet. "Ben Johnston's (b. 1926) music has reached a wide and diverse audience, both at home and abroad, without compromising its high seriousness or its depth of philosophic purpose. His music shows the confluence of several traditions of music-making that have flourished within the United States. In the 1950s his output was characterized by the neoclassicism of his teacher Darius Milhaud. In the 1960s he explored serial techniques and, at the end of the decade, indeterminacy. From 1960 onward the overriding technical preoccupation of his music has been its use of just intonation, the tuning system of the music of ancient cultures as well as that of many living traditions worldwide. Johnston is a pioneer in the use of microtones and non-tempered tuning, rationalizing and going beyond Harry Partch's achievements in this domain. His ten string quartets are among the most fascinating collections of work ever produced by an American composer. And yet, like similarly imposing peaks in the American musical landscape -- Ives's Universe Symphony, for example, or the Studies for Player Piano of Conlon Nancarrow -- these works have, for decades now, remained more known about than known, more talked about than played. The scores have been analyzed by musicologists and theorists fascinated by their fusion of advanced compositional techniques (serialism with just intonation, for example; microtonality with a kind of neoclassical revisionism), but they have been too little heard. The Kepler Quartet's recordings -- this disc is the first of a series of three, prepared with Johnston's active support and supervision -- offer lively and scrupulously accurate readings that unlock the door to these marvelous pieces. Like Ives and Nancarrow before him, there is the sense that Johnston's time has finally come."

--
* David Beardsley
* microtonal guitar
* http://biink.com/db

Thanks for the heads up! Ordered this. I've been meaning to get some
recordings of Ben Johnston and this looks like a good place to start.

On 1/23/06, David Beardsley <db@biink.com> wrote:
> Spotted this in the Forced Exposure new releases email on this wet grey
> morning, I always wanted to here these:
>
>
> NEW WORLD RECORDS
>
> JOHNSTON, BEN: String Quartets Nos. 2, 3, 4 & 9 CD (NW 80637) 14.00
> Performed by Kepler Quartet. "Ben Johnston's (b. 1926) music has reached
> a wide and diverse audience, both at home and abroad, without
> compromising its high seriousness or its depth of philosophic purpose.
> His music shows the confluence of several traditions of music-making
> that have flourished within the United States. In the 1950s his output
> was characterized by the neoclassicism of his teacher Darius Milhaud. In
> the 1960s he explored serial techniques and, at the end of the decade,
> indeterminacy. From 1960 onward the overriding technical preoccupation
> of his music has been its use of just intonation, the tuning system of
> the music of ancient cultures as well as that of many living traditions
> worldwide. Johnston is a pioneer in the use of microtones and
> non-tempered tuning, rationalizing and going beyond Harry Partch's
> achievements in this domain. His ten string quartets are among the most
> fascinating collections of work ever produced by an American composer.
> And yet, like similarly imposing peaks in the American musical landscape
> -- Ives's Universe Symphony, for example, or the Studies for Player
> Piano of Conlon Nancarrow -- these works have, for decades now, remained
> more known about than known, more talked about than played. The scores
> have been analyzed by musicologists and theorists fascinated by their
> fusion of advanced compositional techniques (serialism with just
> intonation, for example; microtonality with a kind of neoclassical
> revisionism), but they have been too little heard. The Kepler Quartet's
> recordings -- this disc is the first of a series of three, prepared with
> Johnston's active support and supervision -- offer lively and
> scrupulously accurate readings that unlock the door to these marvelous
> pieces. Like Ives and Nancarrow before him, there is the sense that
> Johnston's time has finally come."
>
>
> --
> * David Beardsley
> * microtonal guitar
> * http://biink.com/db
>
>
>
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