Chicago Classical Music

In last week's post, I discussed how we come up with recording projects on Cedille Records that add value to the CD catalog: how I sometimes help an artist or group refine or flesh out a concept and how other times the musicians come to me with a thoughtful program fully formed. Our newest release with the Pacifica Quartet definitely falls into the latter category.

To explain the concept behind this fascinating disc, I turn the keyboard and mouse over to guest blogger Sibbi Bernhardsson of the Pacifica Quartet:

Many have asked me and the quartet about our new CD titled Declarations — Music Between the Wars. Why did we put works by Janacek, Hindemith, and Ruth Crawford Seeger together? Is there a link between these very different works?

Our most important projects — both recording projects and concert projects — in the past have been cycles. The complete Mendelssohn Quartets recording, the complete Elliot Carter string quartets performed in one evening, and our upcoming Beethoven cycle, which we will perform in Chicago next year. So what explains Declarations, our first multi-composer disc?

We learned Janacek's “Intimate Letters” about five years ago. This great quartet deals with very emotional issues such as mortality, guilt, and desire. As a result, the music is highly neurotic, going from the most tender and beautiful to great devastation; sometimes it even sounds violent. All this often occurs within just a single phrase.

The Hindemith Op. 22 we learned a couple of years later. Like most people from his era, Hindemith was deeply moved by the events of the end of World War I and the years that followed. His music took a great change as a result. It became much more emotional and outwardly expressive. Again the most peaceful, still, and beautiful music is juxtaposed with great driving rhythms and very forceful elements. The most serene vs. the most explosive and the most pessimistic vs. great optimism.

When we learned the quartet by Ruth Crawford Seeger, we felt we had never played anything like it. While the music is very modernist, it is also so fresh and innovative, and again, incredibly emotionally charged. But her way of saying things is very different from Hindemith and Janacek. This work is only about twelve minutes long. But it is the most complex and difficult twelve minutes we have ever played! As our violist Masumi says, "She has turned the quartet into an eight armed organism."

The heart of the work is the third movement, where we all have different dynamics and swells. The movement has no real rhythmic pattern, but the swells create rhythmic patterns, making the movement sound like a scary dream, while the last movement would work very well as the soundtrack for a thriller.

We were struck with the fact that, while these masterpieces were all written within a decade and are all very emotionally charged, they could not be more different in one key respect: Although the psychological effect or journey is similar when playing or listening to these works, the musical language of each work is unique, and very different from the other two.

The composers come from very different cultural backgrounds: Janacek was Czech, Hindemith German and very much trained in the great German tradition, and Ruth Crawford Seeger was a female American composer who later gave up composing to raise her stepchildren (including the famous folk musician Pete Seeger). It is therefore not surprising that these composers would express similar issues and emotions in such very different ways. Another interesting connection is that all three were outspoken about social issues and involved in social activism.

This time between the wars is a very fascinating creative period of the 20th century. All that turmoil and optimism followed by great disappointment and tragedy is evident in the art that was created during this time. We believe that the three selections on this disc represent this amazing, turbulent era very well.

- Sibbi Bernhardsson

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