The designation "first Chinese composer of avant-garde music" is such a prescient one that it sets up, perhaps, an unreasonable expectation for Chinese composer Ge Gan-Ru: with every release, one is looking for Ge to come down to earth in some fashion, for worm holes in his silkscreen. Ge only seems to come back stronger and better every time, and for the moment it seems as there's no stopping him. Naxos' Ge Gan-Ru: Fall of Baghdad focuses on Ge's cycle of string quartets (which in August 2009 was up to five in number); ...
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The designation "first Chinese composer of avant-garde music" is such a prescient one that it sets up, perhaps, an unreasonable expectation for Chinese composer Ge Gan-Ru: with every release, one is looking for Ge to come down to earth in some fashion, for worm holes in his silkscreen. Ge only seems to come back stronger and better every time, and for the moment it seems as there's no stopping him. Naxos' Ge Gan-Ru: Fall of Baghdad focuses on Ge's cycle of string quartets (which in August 2009 was up to five in number); this features the group ModernWorks, under the leadership of arch new music cellist Madeleine Shapiro, in the First, Fourth, and Fifth of Ge's string quartets. From the first, this disc makes clear that Ge's string quartet cycle is as strong and substantive at least as Nicolas Bacri's; perhaps as much as Bartók's.Ge's String Quartet No. 1 (1983) is contemporaneous with his well-known cello solo, Lost Style, often identified as the first avant-garde composition to come from China....
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