Music review: Arditti Quartet

Published on Monday 31 August 2009 19:04

ARDITTI QUARTET **** QUEEN'S HALL, EDINBURGH

THE ringing stone of Tiree, a neolithic rock gong, proved to be a rich source of inspiration for Nigel Osborne's festival commission Tiree, evoking the magical sounds of the stone as well as that of the surrounding landscape.

Ethereal harmonics and shimmering strings conjured up images of windswept beaches and noisy seabirds, underpinned by polyphonic melodies coming from the Gaelic psalm tradition. This was a finely crafted, atmospheric work that ended with a recording of the ancient stone, sparkling like a halo of cut glass crystal, played through a special metal speaker.

Similar string techniques were deployed by Ligeti in his String Quartet No2, but on a more agitated scale, as if all the notes were put in a blender and spun out to produce an extraordinary array of sonorities and textures. The quartet even appeared to bend time in the frenetic pizzicato movement.

When it comes to cutting-edge repertoire, the Ardittis have few rivals, demonstrated here in an illuminative reading of Berg's tense string Quartet Op3. However, their interpretation of Beethoven's String Quartet in F minor Op 95, which sees the composer knocking on the door of modernism in the second movement, lacked conviction.