Ok, good, so what do you believe to be:


and


and in terms of:


might you like to elaborate beyond a simple yes or no - it would be interesting to know more precisely which attributes of the work you believe contribute to such a situation?

(and of course this debate could be in a separate thread if others would prefer that? Though if one believes that considering the reception of a piece of music is quite an important part of studying it, as I do, then we are in some sense talking about the music if considering these questions.)

I posted earlier but said post has mysteriously failed to appear. However, the content of Ron's post pretty much echoes mine. John, you have made your feelings very clear about the inclusion of the Holliger in the performance and I feel that your continued return to insisting on your right to express your opinion, which. incidentally, no one is disputing, is doing the Board no favours at all. Can we please let it rest now?

Now Richard, about Schumann ...

[NOT WORTH THE e-ink with which it was written]

Ian,

I had the very same thought, though I didn't come up with Elton John 

Reading about the mentioned links Holliger had with the other items in the programme, I was thinking that a programme could be imagined that contained just about any combination of works and genres because of links that one could find. All the Holliger performances I have on disc are baroque, particularly a set of works by Zelenka, and I'm sure Holliger has been struck by some of the unique features of Zelenka's work, maybe there's something of Zelenka in Holliger's quartet (but I'm not knowledgable enough to find that out of course).


John

I've just heard the COTW Schoenberg finale, and a quote from the lad 'imself in accepting a bursary late in life when he was in financial crisis (rough paraphrase):

'... I was thrown into hot water, so hot that  I couldn't swim with the tide, I had to swim against it'.

Come to that Schumann might have been constrained to say that, and it seems very Beethovenian, Tippettian, etc etc...

I think Holliger does what he does for similar reasons-he's just been able to work in a more sympathetic climate?

Ian, you're of course more up with research, but what is the 'gay' element here? More power to them and their lobby if it's of value, but I thought Heinz and Ursula were an item? The great Alex Comfort -based on some anthropoligal and socio-psychological stuff-would have argued that there's an implicit psychological, rather than necessarily physical ,bisexuality in the thinking male including the creative one.

I have absolutely less than no idea. Ye gods - what is this thread coming to, and why?!

I have now at last had an opportunity to listen - sadly not to the entire concert, but at least to the Holliger Second Quartet (and in case anyone here - t_i_n in particular - might wonder, the reason why I've not done so sooner has all to do with that word "opportunity").

Had I approached this piece with any preconceived notions arising from certain remarks about it in this thread, I might have done so with misgivings, but I didn't, so I didn't (if you see what I mean). Holliger is, quite understandably, all too well aware of the historical legacy of quartet writing to which no one composing a new work for string quartet can afford to ignore, so one question that inevitably comes to mind is whether he has contributed something top the repertoire that stands up to scrutiny in the constantly developing medium of the string quartet and, to my mind, the resounding answer is yes.

The piece maintained a sense of direction, momentum and the appropriate placing of this gesture and that texture that, for the most part (to me, anyway) held the attention with never a sense that any idea was being presented in a gratuitously irrelevant kind of way but was always at the service of the whole. I was as struck as Richard with its frequent recourse to the kind of density that is not especially common (at least to such an extent) in a string quartet, yet in this I am minded that Holliger is in this respect no so very different to Franck, whose sole quartet (one of his best works, I think) seems so often make a point of straining at or near the edges of what a mere four string players can do.

Does Holliger's piece stand up well against major recent quartets by Ferneyhough and Carter, for example? Well, this is where I'm not so sure that I'd go quite as far as Richard's claims, but again the answer is nevertheless a pretty unequivocal yes.

Was there a real problem about sandwiching it between quartets by Schubert and Schumann? Well, as I've admitted, I've not heard the entire programme, so I have accordingly to be wary of how I answer that, but the extent to which Holliger has demonstrated in this work that he belongs to the ongoing and ever-developing quartet tradition makes it far from obvious to me that the answer here would be no. Of course I can understand why some of the Wiggie audience might disagree, but then that's not my fault, nor that of the composer, nor that of the ensemble who played that programme and who, I have to say, seemed to me to have acquitted themselves splendidly in their presentation of Holliger's work, to their great credit. There can surely be no question that no one of Zehetmair's integrity would even have dreamt of plaicng that work in that position in the programme as any kind of gimmick of marketing or otherwise.

Programming any new work must need very careful consideration: if it's in a programme with other works and is placed in the middle, then the way it's framed becomes vitally important. Surrounding it with other modern works might call attention to its ancestry, but might also lessen its impact: there's also the question of rehearsal time if three contemporary works are to be performed. The Zehetmair Quartet aren't a full-time ensemble, they all have other commitments, so a programme containing three contemporary works would probably have been logistically impossible, as well as possibly less successful programming; warm-up, exercise, cool-down seems fair enough to me.