Momenta Quartet

The present recording celebrates the staggering variety of the American string quartet in the 21st century. All but one of the five works was given its first performance by the Momenta Quartet, a group which since its founding nearly 22 years ago has proven itself equally comfortable with modernist complexity, neoromanticism, postminimalism, microtonality, and music with indeterminate and/or improvisatory elements. Echoes of all these aesthetics surface here, but each composer has carved out an …

The interesting thing about Robert Morris’s (b. 1943) remarkable career as a composer (and a theorist) is how free he is to move from composing works of great rigor with intricate integrity in his use of pitch-class design, to works of sonic beauty to be performed in a natural outdoor environment, to imaginative electronic/computer music, to the music of acculturation. Among the latter, his monumental Carnatic String Quartet is an outstanding example. In his own words: “Carnatic String Quartet (…

Alvin Singleton’s (b. 1940) approach to music-making has all along been involved in an interplay with listeners and their psychology. While this does not mean he has been centered on simply pleasing his audiences, his work seems to constantly draw his audience into confronting challenges of listening, and they tend to end up pleased. Therefore, with so many of his pieces, they might be extremely complex and masterfully crafted, but seldom do you feel he presents the listener with something they …