Samuel Adams String Quartet No. 2 ‘Current’*; Violin Diptych; Shade Studies Karen Gomyo (violin), Conor Hanick (piano); *Spektral Quartet Other Minds OM 1040-2 48:46 mins
Current, Samuel Adams’s second string quartet opens with a neat two-note motif that is gradually stretched out of shape like an over-worn t-shirt. More important are the spaces in-between – enhanced by electronics derived from snare drums. The resulting resonance is a thread – the eponymous current – throughout the five movements, beautifully integrated with the acoustic sound produced by Spektral Quartet, who, as their name suggests, are at home in this abstraction. It can take some time to adjust to spectralism, a style of music that draws on the sculptural qualities of sound; a general moulding of timbre rather than clearly defined melodic themes. In the third movement, Adams experiments with scalic sequences; in the fifth, a single pitch creates a drone-like bass line. There’s commonality with the minimalism of Arvo Pärt – more obviously felt in Shade Studies (2014), a solo piano piece commissioned to mark Terry Riley’s 80th birthday. The electronics are pleasingly subtle; a small speaker tucked under the piano lid suggests an enhanced sostenuto pedal, giving the sparse music a bell-like quality. Pianist Conor Hanick – who recently premiered Adams’s new piano concerto with the San Francisco Symphony – joins Karen Gomyo in Violin Diptych (2020), a piece that marries cantabile string solos with bolder digital effects and, eventually, chordal piano melodies. A booklet note ripe for Pseuds Corner claims this erases ‘the false dichotomy of new and historic music in an embrace of the entire enterprise as a fertile, ultimately bi-directional, continuum’.
Claire Jackson