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American Classics - Coates: String Quartet No. 9, Sonata For Violin Solo; Lyric Suite

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Details

Composer
COATES, GLORIA
Artist
Skaerved, Chadwick
Format
CD
Discs
1
Label
Naxos
Released
Sep 28, 2010
Catalog #
8559666
UPC
636943966624

About



COATES String Quartet No. 9. 1 Sonata for Solo Violin. 2 Lyric Suite for Piano Trio, “Split the Lark, and You’ll find the Music 2,3” • 1 Kreutzer Str Qrt; 2, 3 Peter Sheppard Skaerved (vn); 3 Neil Hyde, (vc); 3 Roderick Chadwick (pn) • NAXOS 8.559666 (58: 51)


I get the feeling that Gloria Coates does not spend a lot of time worrying about whether or not other people enjoy her music. That is a compliment, not a complaint. Whether or not you like what she does, she does it with a very personal style and with great conviction. The present CD, the fifth of Coates’s music to be released under Naxos’s American Classics imprint, ranks very low on the list of CDs one would play as light background music during a convivial dinner with friends. Coates’s music, this CD included, forces one to consider why we listen to music at all, and to examine what we mean by “entertainment.” To my thinking, entertainment, in the usual sense of the word, is overrated. We need to devote equal time and effort to moving ourselves into new emotional and intellectual territories, even at the risk of causing ourselves a little pain.


Coates is an American who now lives in Germany. In an interview, she describes the German culture as “very serious and formal,” and comments, “One is left alone much of the time unless he plans ahead.” Is there anyone in the United States who is writing music quite like Coates’s? Not that I am aware of. Her music says difficult things—things Americans seem unwilling to say at this point.


This is the world premiere recording of her recent (2007) String Quartet No. 9. The work is in two movements, both of them slow, and both of them making an almost obsessively detailed exploration of texture and sound. The first is a canon and nearly a palindrome, although the materials thus treated are not only melodic but also textural. The long, siren-like glissando, a trademark of Coates’s music from the start of her career, appears six minutes in and produces an unsettling effect. The listener also is thrown off kilter by pitch, because the first violin and the viola are tuned down one quarter-tone. Glissandos occur in the second movement, albeit within a narrower range; imagine listening to the slow movement of a late Beethoven quartet on a turntable whose motor is giving out and from an LP that has been pressed off-center. As Kyle Gann writes in his booklet notes, “The atmosphere is unworldly, creepily dissonant and yet serene, a kind of music of the spheres.”


The Sonata for Violin Solo (2000) allows aspects of Coates’s compositional style to stand out in stark relief. The movement titles—Prelude, Fantasia, Berceuse, and Hornpipe—suggest Handel or Bach, or at any rate more “traditional” composers, but once again, Coates goes her own fascinating way.


One might think that Emily Dickinson would elicit a brighter response from any composer. All of the Lyric Suite’s (1996) seven movements are headed by a fragment from Dickinson’s poetry. The Belle of Amherst was a mystic and a visionary, though, and Coates’s music underscores the notion that much of Dickinson’s work was actually quite strange, considering the time and place in which she lived. Once again, unusual playing techniques, including strings tuned a quarter-tone flat, create a sound world that is eerily beautiful and queasy.


For Coates newbies, any of the discs featuring her orchestral works might be a slightly easier introduction. Nevertheless, I feel that the present CD is an honest representation of who she is and what she does.


The Kreutzer Quartet has participated in earlier Coates recordings, and the quartet’s first violinist, Peter Sheppard Skærved, has championed Coates for her music for two decades. (Neil Heyde is the quartet’s cellist.) It is hard to know what to say about the performances, except that there would be little point in performing and recording this music if one didn’t believe in it. Separately and together, the quartet’s members, plus pianist Chadwick, are committed to the task, and carry it out with deep concentration.


As usual, the cover art is a painting by Gloria Coates, whose visual art looks much like her music sounds. As the saying goes, when God gave out talent, she stood in line twice.


FANFARE: Raymond Tuttle

Tracklist 13 tracks

  1. 1 I. Fluendo espressivo 16:32
    Track
    1
    Title
    I. Fluendo espressivo
    Duration
    16:32
    Composer
    Gloria Coates
    Ensemble
    Kreutzer Quartet
  2. 2 II. Moderato 09:13
    Track
    2
    Title
    II. Moderato
    Duration
    09:13
    Composer
    Gloria Coates
    Ensemble
    Kreutzer Quartet
  3. 3 I. Prelude 02:16
    Track
    3
    Title
    I. Prelude
    Duration
    02:16
    Composer
    Gloria Coates
    Performer
    Peter Sheppard Skærved
  4. 4 II. Fantasia 03:58
    Track
    4
    Title
    II. Fantasia
    Duration
    03:58
    Composer
    Gloria Coates
    Performer
    Peter Sheppard Skærved
  5. 5 III. Berceuse 02:20
    Track
    5
    Title
    III. Berceuse
    Duration
    02:20
    Composer
    Gloria Coates
    Performer
    Peter Sheppard Skærved
  6. 6 IV. Hornpipe 04:34
    Track
    6
    Title
    IV. Hornpipe
    Duration
    04:34
    Composer
    Gloria Coates
    Performer
    Peter Sheppard Skærved
  7. 7 I. Bells in Steeples 02:07
    Track
    7
    Title
    I. Bells in Steeples
    Duration
    02:07
    Composer
    Gloria Coates
    Performer
    Peter Sheppard Skærved, Neil Heyde, Roderick Chadwick
  8. 8 II. An Amethyst Remembrance 02:50
    Track
    8
    Title
    II. An Amethyst Remembrance
    Duration
    02:50
    Composer
    Gloria Coates
    Performer
    Peter Sheppard Skærved, Neil Heyde, Roderick Chadwick
  9. 9 III. Split the Lark - and you'll find the Music 03:46
    Track
    9
    Title
    III. Split the Lark - and you'll find the Music
    Duration
    03:46
    Composer
    Gloria Coates
    Performer
    Peter Sheppard Skærved, Neil Heyde, Roderick Chadwick
  10. 10 IV. The Heart Within 03:21
    Track
    10
    Title
    IV. The Heart Within
    Duration
    03:21
    Composer
    Gloria Coates
    Performer
    Peter Sheppard Skærved, Neil Heyde, Roderick Chadwick
  11. 11 V. Noon - is the Hinge of Day 01:43
    Track
    11
    Title
    V. Noon - is the Hinge of Day
    Duration
    01:43
    Composer
    Gloria Coates
    Performer
    Peter Sheppard Skærved, Neil Heyde, Roderick Chadwick
  12. 12 VI. A wind with fingers 03:44
    Track
    12
    Title
    VI. A wind with fingers
    Duration
    03:44
    Composer
    Gloria Coates
    Performer
    Peter Sheppard Skærved, Neil Heyde, Roderick Chadwick
  13. 13 VII. Evening - the Tissue Door 02:27
    Track
    13
    Title
    VII. Evening - the Tissue Door
    Duration
    02:27
    Composer
    Gloria Coates
    Performer
    Peter Sheppard Skærved, Neil Heyde, Roderick Chadwick