John Zorn: Complete String Quartets in Bloomington, MN

A few minutes of listening here will disabuse anyone of the notion that string quartets by
John Zorn
represent any kind of a move toward a purely classical idiom from the bristly, category-defying composer and saxophonist. The music here is as in-your-face and on-the-edge as anything else
Zorn
has written.
adds a note for physical buyers in the booklet (recommended) stating his longtime appreciation for the genre, and the works here stretch from 1988 to 2017 for the mysterious finale,
The Unseen
. Each work has its own idea, but one would not (or might not) say that his fundamental conception of the genre has changed.
has had a long relationship with the
JACK Quartet
, and the crack performances here, with the members executing every extreme demand
places on them, may be taken as definitive. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see other quartets perform these works if only to wake up an unsuspecting audience. The quartets have varying structures.
Necronomicon
is made up of five short movements, but most of the works are single-movement, longer pieces. The main "classical" element of these are quotations or evocations of various kinds of pieces (
, says
, takes
Bartók
's
String Quartet No. 4
and stretches its techniques to the breaking point.
The Remedy of Fortune
is most interesting, with slices of medieval song juxtaposed with punk rock violence. Will this beautifully recorded collection convert listeners to
? Maybe or maybe not, but it is certainly worth hearing as an example of virtuoso playing on its own. ~ James Manheim