
The 11th quartet is for me one of the most challenging pieces of music I’ve heard in a long time. There’s a review on Amazon US which basically says it’s a retreat from the avant garde, but I don’t think that’s a helpful, or indeed a meaningful thing to say. While much of the music does not have the ecstatically jagged contours which characterised the post war avant garde, it still challenges older notions of coherence and is still overflowing with expressive immediacy. In this music, you feel that anything is possible.
The reason I find it challenging is that it always feels in an unstable state, and that makes it maybe the least comforting pieces of music I’ve ever heard. It’s awkward and precarious - as if constantly poised on a cantilever ready to tumble disastrously. The amazon review also claims that it’s a Holocaust memorial piece, so maybe that comfort would be inappropriate. It has taken me a long time to be able to listen to it in fact - my first reaction was complete rejection, repulsion. I could not say of this music “I like it.”
There are gestures to existing musics of course. I can’t identify which composers are alluded to though, maybe a snip of the cavatina of op 130 by the composer who, like Voldemort and Sauron, does not need to be named. But I’m not sure.
I think the performance and sound do not do justice to the music. It’s listenable, that’s the best I can say. It was created by Takacs Quartet apparently, but I can find no trace of the performance.
Booklet is here
https://www.naxosmusiclibrary.com/sharedfiles/booklets/WER/booklet-WER6756-2.pdf