By Robert Croan The Delray String Quartet featured three works, each containing some sort of spiritual connection, in its Jan. 15 concert at Fort Lauderdale’s All Saints Episcopal Church. The sacred elements, however — variously Catholic, Jewish and Russian Orthodox — were secondary to the music itself, window dressing perhaps, to conform to the evening’s venue. Central to … [Read more...]
Danielpour’s new quartet outlines search for inner divinity
In 1995, the composer Richard Danielpour marked the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps in a string quartet he subtitled Psalms of Sorrow. That quartet, his third, featured a baritone singing texts from Stephen Mitchell’s translation of some of the Psalms. Last year, Danielpour returned to the string quartet for a seventh essay in that form, and also … [Read more...]
Danielpour quartet makes strong impression at Delray SQ
The string quartet remains the vessel into which composers since the days of Haydn have poured their deepest thoughts, perhaps because there is something about the intimate, confessional sound of the four instruments that encourages it. On Sunday afternoon, the Delray String Quartet offered a fine contemporary example of serious string-quartet writing with a performance of the … [Read more...]