Pandora's Box Arditti Quartet & Sarah Maria Sun

• 1 Fletch 14:41
• 2 A Fast, Scherzo-Like Mechanism of Terraced Accelerandos 03:52
• 3 Quiet Heterophony - Col Legno, Vertical Spiccato 04:11
• 4 Alla Chitarra 03:02
• 5 Al Tambura 03:17
• 6 Static Harmony with Microtonal Inflexions 03:21
• 7 A Second Scherzo, with Changing Metre 03:46
• 8 Wonderful Four-Headed Nightingale 08:43
• 9 Pandora's Box 15:00
• Total Runtime 59:53

Info for Pandora's Box

At the 2013 edition of our partner festival WIEN MODERN the Arditti Quartet performed two concert evenings, and from the live recordings we have selected four pieces. Each of the compositions by Rebecca Saunders, Benedict Mason, Luke Bedford and John Zorn is a little masterpiece in its own right.

The Arditti Quartet has not only helped to shape our perception of contemporary music over the past forty years but, thanks to their accumulated experience, these four musicians also exemplify the future of this fascinating musical universe.

“These four must be stopped…,” Paul Griffiths wrote more than twenty five years ago about the, even back then, widely praised Arditti Quartet, referring to these excellent musicians’ gift for making wonderful music irrespective of the quality of the actual composition. As regards the present album, though, we need not worry about this dilemma, given that each of the compositions by Rebecca Saunders, Benedict Mason, Luke Bedford and John Zorn is a little masterpiece in its own right. The Arditti Quartet has not only helped to shape our perception of contemporary music over the past forty years but, thanks to their accumulated experience, these four musicians also exemplify the future of this fascinating musical universe.

“This outstanding disc of contemporary works, performed live by the Arditti Quartet, is one of blazing beauty and invention...[Pandora's Box] is at once operatic, darkly beautiful and surprisingly frightening, and features an exceptional performance by Sarah Maria Sun.” (BBC Music Magazine)

“The Arditti Quartet brings together four diverse, cutting-edge works for string quartet. The longest and most venerable is Benedict Mason’s String Quartet No.2 from 1993, which plays out like a six-movement harlequinade of sounds and techniques.” (Financial Times)

“this typically diverse, typically exemplary Arditti recital brings four works that were all written for the quartet on to disc for the first time...Zorn adds a soprano...to the four strings to deliver the composer’s own German text, taking the music into an expressionist world that’s sometimes close to that of the Second Viennese School, but also much more threateningly Zorn’s own.” (The Guardian)

„Arditti Quartet celebrates its 40th anniversary in astounding fashion ... Half of what Arditti did here simply didn t seem physically possible.“ (Los Angeles Times)

Sarah Maria Sun, soprano (on John Zorn: Pandora’s Box)
Arditti Quartet:
Irvine Arditti, violin
Ashot Sarkissjan, violin
Ralf Ehlers, viola
Lucas Fels, violoncello

No biography found.

Booklet for Pandora's Box