COMPOSERS: Jack
LABELS: Deux-Elles
ALBUM TITLE: Jack
WORKS: String Quartet No. 3; String Quartet No. 4; String Quartet No. 5; String Quartet No. 6 (Serenade)
PERFORMER: Arditti Quartet
CATALOGUE NO: DXL 1116
Contemporary British composer
Adrian Jack’s work not only
encompasses music journalism but
also an academic career and concert
promotion; his MusICA series at the
Institute of Contemporary Arts in
London ran for many years and was
an essential fixture in the capital’s
new music calendar. The fact that
Jack is also a composer has been
somewhat eclipsed by all these other
high profile activities, so it’s very
pleasing to have this recording of
four of his six quartets.
He mostly favours a wellventilated,
expositionary style in
which structural devices are clearly
displayed but at the same time
conveying some elegantly managed
shifts of mood and pace. Often
delicate, occasionally robust but highly listenable throughout, there’s
nothing quite like Jack’s music
in the modern quartet repertoire.
These pieces also benefit from being
offered in a fairly concentrated dose
rather than being scattered across
various concert discs. The recording
(engineered by Tony Faulkner)
is sonically immaculate and the
Arditti deliver a typically empathetic
performance. Roger Thomas