Critic’s Choice
So, what’s new? Well, there’s Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 8, which he says “adds a playful and whimsical flavor to the otherwise solemn string quartet repertoire.” We can’t confirm that, because nobody on this side of the pond has heard it yet. The same goes for Dan Trueman’s Songs That Are Hard To Sing for string quartet and percussion—we don’t know if it really sounds (in the composer’s words) “like something we might be able to sing in a parallel universe.” And Broken Unisons by the Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy, featuring what he calls “jingly-jangly pulsating resonance, the overtones spilling over each other,” still awaits its world premiere.
Many questions will be answered on Tuesday night when Sō Percussion and JACK Quartet join forces at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall to unveil these adventurous pieces. Does the combination of two of today’s hottest new-music groups really make, as composer Trueman writes, “possibly the most incredible contemporary music band imaginable”? We’ll find that out too.
Sō Percussion and JACK Quartet perform U.S. or world premieres of works by Philip Glass, Donnacha Dennehy, and Dan Trueman 7 p.m. Tuesday at Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall. carnegiehall.org; 212-247-7800.
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