GREGORIO ZANON (b.1980): Romanèche Rhapsody for Cello and String Quintet, String Quartets No. 1 and No. 2 "Légende à Quatre", Concerto Grosso for String Quintet and Piano.

Catalogue Number: 02J096
Label: Claves
Reference: 50-2606
Format: CD
Price: $16.98
Description: These (necessarily!) recent compositions by a composer still in his 20s display a Romantic sensibility and an expressive, communicative urgency which finds its outlet in music with a constant, surging, youthful energy. The Rhapsody is the most overtly tonal work here, though all the pieces are firmly grounded in tonality. However, Zanon's freely eclectic vocabulary allows the exploration of microtonal inflections, as in the second quartet, where material in equal temperament and natural temperament interacts to allow a subtle sense of chaotic instability. Generally, though, the composer's most compelling musical arguments are presented in terms that would not have been alien to Elgar, or Mahler, or certainly early Schoenberg. The Concerto Grosso is a tense, dramatic piece, with a small amount of extended technique (direct contact on the piano strings) and ambiguous high harmonics in the strings alongside surprisingly straightforward melodic writing - tunes! - which Zanon employs with a facility that many composers of far greater experience and maturity might envy. An immensely impressive debut featuring works that are involving and thoroughly engaging in their own right. Quatuor Terpsycordes, Mark Drobinsky (cello), Jocelyne Rudasigwa (double bass), Xavier Dami (piano).