Luigi Nono 1: Fragmente-Stille, An Diotima / "Hay Que Caminar" (1994)

We can still ponder this quartet written for the Bonn Festival in 1980. It has a wonderful quality of longevity, striking a passion for the timbre of the human voice. Arditti fully understood what Nono wanted: not a pretty but rather a threadbare timbre, unfinished and ugly, carrying the weight of the 20th century horrors and its challenges; Am Steg, like fingernails slowly descending down a chalkboard, the string body pulverized into fine particles of timbre not dissimilar to Penderecki's masterpiece on the subject of nuclear terror. While modernity may have died, Nono still lives on, for his departure always seem to give rise to another beginning of his impassioned love for unshackled timbre.

Arditti fully understood what Nono wanted: not a pretty but rather a threadbare timbre, unfinished and ugly, carrying the weight of the 20th century horrors and its challenges; Am Steg, like fingernails slowly descending down a chalkboard, the string body pulverized into fine particles of timbre not dissimilar to Penderecki's masterpiece on the subject of nuclear terror. While modernity may have died, Nono still lives on, for his departure always seem to give rise to another beginning of his impassioned love for unshackled timbre.

Tracklist

1. Fragmente-Stille, An Diotima (36:10)
for string quartet

Arditti String Quartet
Irvine Arditti (Violin)
David Alberman (Violin)
Levine Andrade (Viola)
Rohan de Saram (Cello)

"Hay Que Caminar" Soñando (27:40)

2. Première Partie
3. Deuxième Partie
4. Troisième Partie

Irvine Arditti, violin
David Alberman, violin

Auvidis/Montaigne: 789005

Important note:

First, keep in mind that there is a RAR file within a RAR file. Therefore, you're advised to extract each file and then repeat again for the extracted files. Second, the original cover is now replaced with a better one. I couldn't add it to the archive, so I uploaded it as an image for this post. Just click on the above pic and select "save as".