KRONOS QUARTET - Music of Vladimir Martynov

Be sure not to miss the Kronos Quartet playing with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Saturday, March 3, 2012 as part of the New Creations Festival. They'll be playing a specially-commissioned piece by Canadian composer Derek Charke. That piece isn't on their latest album, which instead features the work of Vladimir Martynov (whose opening piece The Beatitudes is especially sublime).

"In 1979, Vladimir Martynov entered the Spiritual Academy at the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, where he worked on preserving and restoring traditional Russian Orthodox chant. He returned to composition in the 1990s with a new style that combined the traditions of American minimalism with the repetitive chant of Russian Orthodoxy. As Greg Dubinsky writes in the liner notes, Martynov explores the 'perspective of the Orthodox Church’s hermetic, ascetic tradition of insight and ecstasy achieved through ceaseless prayer. His goal is to create a music that maintains this pose of enraptured contemplation for as long as possible.'" - Nonesuch

"Martynov's commissioned compositions include a re-scoring of his 1998 work The Beatitudes, Schubert-Quintet (Unfinished), and Der Abschied. Schubert-Quintet (Unfinished) is influenced by Schubert's String Quartet in C Major, and allows Kronos Quartet to reunite with former cellist Joan Jeanrenaud. In it, Martynov goes backwards in time, meeting Schubert and then extending his thought into a modern composition that highlights the power found in the interaction of two cellos. Der Abschied is a tribute to Martynov's father, and the piece replicates his father's difficult final breaths through its use of repetition." - The Violin Shop