Peter Maxwell Davies - Naxos Quartets Nos. 7 And 8 (Maggini Quartet) (Music CD) available on June 29 2018 from Base for 5.69
Naxos available on November 09 2014 from Amazon for $4.15
UPC bar code 747313239924 ξ2 registered June 29 2018
UPC bar code 747313239924 ξ1 registered November 09 2014
Product category is MUSIC CD - CD - Classical Audio
Manufacturered by Naxos
Product size is 0"x0"x0"
Product weight is 0.2 lbs.
All products are BRAND NEW and factory sealed. Fast shipping and 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed. These are the premiere performances of Peter Maxwell Davies' quartets Nos. 7 and 8, commissioned by Naxos. The Seventh is in seven slow movements, and, the composer tells us, was inspired by several churches in Rome designed by the Baroque architect Borromini in the 17th century. Davies became fascinated with these buildings in the 1950s; he admired and was puzzled by Borromini's use of space and light and his combination of tradition and innovation. Each movement is a metaphor, and in the notes that accompany this CD, Davies attempts to describe what he saw and how he has attempted to translate it into music. Not being in the churches or being familiar with them, the overall effect is oblique at best: we're better off just listening to these brooding, dark movements and trying to get whatever we can out of them. At one point slashing chords offer a medieval flavor; the 6th movement's first two minutes are entirely pizzicato. Overall, the quartet is more interesting than enjoyable or entertaining. Unlike Shostakovich's last, one-slow-movement-after-another quartet, which manages to be very moving, this might leave listeners cold. The Eighth Quartet, in one movement, is a tribute to Queen Elizabeth on her 80th birthday and is based on Dowland's "Queen Elizabeth's Galliard." While its textures are just as dense as those in the Seventh, they are not quite as dreary, and in the last three minutes, the Dowland work shines through in an almost entertaining fashion. The playing of the Maggini Quartet is exemplary. --Robert Levine
Naxos Quartet # 7 (2005), a large work of almost an hour duration, was inspired by the work of the Italian architect Borromini. Maxwell Davies describes in the CD booklet how as a student in the 1950s in Rome he "began to appreciate the extraordinarily original manipulation of space and light in Borromini's work." He continues: "More than in any other seventeenth-century building, a small space would appear huge, due to exaggerated angles and recesses, and to the pulsating rhythms of decoration." The compos..
