The Smith Quartet primarily focuses on contemporary repertoire, and in this collection targets works with themes of death by five British composers. Tim Souster's nightmarish Hambledon Hill, which includes live electronics, uses sampled string sounds to amplify and elaborate on the creepy glissandi, shrieks, and yawps a string quartet is capable of producing. It succeeds marvelously as an atmospheric evocation of a mortuary found in the remains of a Neolithic English hill fort. The Old Woman of Beare by Michael Alcorn also ...
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The Smith Quartet primarily focuses on contemporary repertoire, and in this collection targets works with themes of death by five British composers. Tim Souster's nightmarish Hambledon Hill, which includes live electronics, uses sampled string sounds to amplify and elaborate on the creepy glissandi, shrieks, and yawps a string quartet is capable of producing. It succeeds marvelously as an atmospheric evocation of a mortuary found in the remains of a Neolithic English hill fort. The Old Woman of Beare by Michael Alcorn also uses live electronics, as well as a speaker reciting a translation of an astonishingly modern-sounding ninth century Irish poem, in which a women laments her lost youth and imminent death. Alcorn's electronic sounds are generated by the voice and strings, and with the despairing text, create a mood of fearsome desolation. Gavin Bryars wrote an abbreviated version of The Sinking of the Titanic for the Smith Quartet and electronics. Unlike the previous pieces on the album, Bryars uses...
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Add this copy of Ghost Stories to cart. $32.47, new condition, Sold by newtownvideo rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from huntingdon valley, PA, UNITED STATES, published 2007 by Signum.
