Ethel–yes, that’s the group’s full name–is a New York crossover string quartet that artfully mixes classical elements with jazz, bluegrass, experimental rock, Brazilian folk dance, Finnish fiddling, speech, even animal noises. Each player is a composer in his or her own right; in fact, six of the dozen pieces on Ethel’s latest album were written by them, the remaining six by others.
Ethel’s ingenious, hard-driving, subversive pieces sometimes remind me of the Kronos Quartet’s forays into vernacular styles, which is not to deny the former ensemble’s creative originality or re-creative brilliance. This is their sophomore album for Cantaloupe Music; the music and performances are hugely enjoyable.
The new album by the Pacifica Quartet, ensemble in residence at the University of Chicago, illuminates a fascinating period in 20th-Century music (1922-1931), as represented by the Moravian Leos Janacek’s String Quartet No. 2 (“Intimate Pages”), the German Paul Hindemith’s Quartet No. 4 and the American Ruth Crawford Seeger’s 1931 String Quartet. As Andrea Lamoureux points out in her excellent liner notes, the thematic thread that draws together these disparate works is their composers’ public-spirited humanism.
The Janacek is diamondlike in its luminosity, intensely dramatic, deeply autobiographical music laced with plaintive sonorities. The Crawford Seeger quartet, a landmark of 20th-Century chamber music, is a study in dissonant dynamics that generates overwhelming tragic power. The five-movement Hindemith work bespeaks the contrapuntally complex, anti-romantic style cultivated by the young composing Turks of Weimar Germany. The Pacifica players prove themselves to be splendid advocates of all three pieces; first-rate recording, too.
