Turnage, Newland & Grime: Bracing Change 2 album review — emotive string quartets

Three new string quartets, each played by a different ensemble, make up this second volume in the Bracing Change series. Co-commissioned by Wigmore Hall, the Radcliffe Trust and NMC Recordings, the project is all about renewing the chamber music repertoire.

The disc starts with Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Contusion, his second string quartet, written in 2014. Chosen as the compulsory piece for the 2015 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition, it is recorded here in its revised version. The work references a poem that Sylvia Plath wrote 12 days before her death, but its bleakness is transformed into passion and struggle in Turnage’s music — jagged chords, a troubled rocking motion, anguish, pain. Turnage packs a lot into less than 15 minutes and the Piatti Quartet captures his music’s concentrated emotion.

In the middle comes Paul Newland’s Difference is Everywhere (Altered), a 10-minute exploration of isolated chords, each differing slightly from the one before. Played by Quatuor Bozzini, it is interesting the first time, possibly not thereafter.

Helen Grime’s String Quartet No 2 is much more. Its three movements inhabit a volatile world, where expectant tremolos give way to agitation and uncertainty. The four instruments chase each other’s tails and only at the end does the music find its way to a sense of release, fading out enigmatically, its questions still unanswered. A fine performance by the Heath Quartet carries the listener through its fast-changing landscape.

★★★★☆

‘Bracing Change 2’ is released by NMC