My favorite contemporary string quartets – music by Steve Reich, Jacques Hétu, Gloria Coates, Caroline Shaw and Florence Price

Another instant favorite. On this album two major international forces at the leading edge of contemporary music - The Smith Quartet and American composer Steve Reich - come together for new recordings for three of his most inspiring works. Triple Quartet for three string quartets, Reich's personal dedication to the late Yehudi Menuhin, Duet, and the haunting Different Trains for string quartet and electronic tape.

Jacques Hétu was one of the most frequently performed of all contemporary Canadian composers though his music is still too little known to the outside world. His earlier hallmarks of polytonality and harmonic tension were rooted in European influences, and as his work matured it became increasingly lyrical and virtuosic. His gorgeous Second Quartet concludes with a hauntingly beautiful Andante in memory of the composer’s mother.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, music critic Mark Swed one wrote that “"Coates is a master of microtones, of taking a listener to aural places you never knew could exist and finding the mystical spaces between tones."  The Quartet No. 8 (2001-2002) was written as a memorial to the victims of 9/11 and moves through three movements from complete instability to a kind of hypnotic serenity. 

For this recording the Calidore String Quartet gathered music which transmits ideas by imitating language; its rhythms, cadences and intentions. But it also explores what happens when music substitutes for language. Like many contemporary pieces, Caroline Shaw’s Three Essays comes with a detailed programme, but it’s perfectly possible to enjoy it just as abstract music: playful, heartfelt, exuberant and always surprising enough to hold the attention.  This album also includes quartets by Shostakovich and Schumann.

The story of Price's rescue from obscurity is now familiar...her ongoing rediscovery continues. Though she wrote almost 400 pieces for orchestra, chamber ensemble, and piano, as well as art songs and arrangements of spirituals, most of the compositions by the Little Rock-born Price were unpublished at the time of her 1953 death. The discovery in 2009 of an abundance of lost pieces was instrumental in seeing her music undergo its current renaissance. The String Quartet No. 2 in A minor...was not performed in her lifetime and first published in 2019.  This beautiful music deserves to be listened to.

Do you have a favorite piece of music by a living composer?  Let us know and we will add it to the list.