Fuchs: Quartets 2, 3, & 4
The American String Quartet
Albany TROY 480

String quartet writing is alive and well in America.  Before I bought
this CD I had never heard of Kenneth Fuchs.  But members of the American
String Quartet are old friends and I typically buy their new releases.
I'm glad I did.

Fuchs, Director of the School of Music at the University of Oklahoma,
and formerly Dean of Students and Academics at the Manhattan School of
Music, is a real composer.  On the basis of these three quartets, one
can say that he has a genuine lyrical gift, as well as a masterful sense
of form, expert counterpoint, rhythmic verve, and drama.

The Second Quartet has five movements inspired by five different pieces
of Robert Motherwell, whose collages the composer had first seen in New
York in 1984.  Full-color photographs of the five collages are included
in the liner notes and it was helpful to look at them while listening
to the music.  Fuchs's style is generally tonal, but with enough spicy
dissonance to make the harmonies interesting, and there are even some
serial sections which, however, are still tonal-sounding.  If I had to
compare his sound to any other composer's, I'd probably have to mention
that of Shostakovich; what composer writing quartets in the second half
of the 20th century could avoid his influence?  Shostakovich's hollow-eyed
terror, however, is missing.  And occasionally, as in the second movement,
there is a melismatic ecstasy reminiscent of Vaughan Williams's 'The
Lark Ascending.' The third movement combines elements of the first two,
while responding to 'The Marriage', one of Motherwell's pieces, and, in
the composer's wry comment, 'it ends badly.' The fourth movement functions
as the work's development and leads to the fifth movement, which one
could consider the quartet's recapitulation; the musical landscapes of
the earlier movements are recalled in an affirmative mood.

The Third Quartet, in three movements and subtitled 'Whispers of Heavenly
Death', was composed 'as a gift for the American String Quartet,' after
they had toured with the Second Quartet.  Each of the movements has an
epigram from Whitman's 'Darest Thou Now O Soul.' The materials in the
three movements are related, and like the working-out of the materials
in Bartok's 'Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta', the harmonic
language becomes more diatonic as the work progresses, with an accompanying
easing of tension.  Like the Second Quartet, this one ends on an affirmative
note.

The Fourth Quartet, subtitled 'Bergonzi', was written for the
Bergonzi Quartet, in 1998.  Its one ten-minute movement has three distinct
sections -- Energico - Meno mosso - Vivo -- played without interruption.
The first section introduces a tremolo figure on the viola followed by
a lyrical, almost swooning, figure on the cello and these become the
major figures in the succeeding lyrical second and energetic third
sections.

This CD probably represents the last ASQ recording that includes
their founding cellist, David Geber, who became head of the Manhattan
School's string department in 2001.  I haven't heard his successor, Margo
Tatgenhorst, yet, but look forward to hearing the ASQ next week.  And,
frankly, I'm hoping they will play one of Fuchs's quartets.  As for this
particular recording, I can only quote the reviewer in American Record
Guide: "Quartet recordings don't get any better than this."

Scott Morrison