There is an old saying among musicians that "Those who can, do it, and those who can't, teach." One might take that a step further and state that those who can neither do it nor write criticism. Whatever degree of truth there might be to these maxims, they do not apply to English composer Adrian Jack, who has worked extensively as a critic and producer for the BBC for close to four decades. In semi-retirement, Jack carefully built a sizeable list of works since the mid-'80s, among them a cycle of string quartets that have ...
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There is an old saying among musicians that "Those who can, do it, and those who can't, teach." One might take that a step further and state that those who can neither do it nor write criticism. Whatever degree of truth there might be to these maxims, they do not apply to English composer Adrian Jack, who has worked extensively as a critic and producer for the BBC for close to four decades. In semi-retirement, Jack carefully built a sizeable list of works since the mid-'80s, among them a cycle of string quartets that have the same weight, seriousness, and immediacy as those by Bartók and Schoenberg. These quartets are so good that one is afraid to praise them too highly and therefore risk robbing the composer of his ability to continue producing them!This Deux-Elles disc, Adrian Jack: String Quartets, is performed by the ensemble that has enthusiastically premiered most of these works: the Arditti String Quartet. The disc contains his third through sixth string quartets, dating from 1996 to 2006, in...
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