By commissioning 10 string quartets to be released on five discs, record label Naxos gave Peter Maxwell Davies a remarkably broad canvass on which to experiment and play. The freedom that such a project offered allowed the composer to stretch beyond the standard conventions of the string quartet literature and make forays into uncharted, if not eccentric, territory (not that this composer had previously shown any reticence toward eccentricity). The Seventh is a perfect model of his departure from previous models -- it lasts ...
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By commissioning 10 string quartets to be released on five discs, record label Naxos gave Peter Maxwell Davies a remarkably broad canvass on which to experiment and play. The freedom that such a project offered allowed the composer to stretch beyond the standard conventions of the string quartet literature and make forays into uncharted, if not eccentric, territory (not that this composer had previously shown any reticence toward eccentricity). The Seventh is a perfect model of his departure from previous models -- it lasts nearly an hour and consists of seven slow movements. Davies based each movement on an aspect of the work of Francesco Borromini, the seventeenth century Roman architect. In the program booklet, he painstakingly relates the details of the architecture as they relate to each movement, and while the correlations may be difficult for the listener to discern, that's rendered irrelevant because the resulting quartet is fully successful as a piece of music apart from any programmatic...
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