Music and Recording Reviews

John Zorn: The Complete String Quartets
JACK Quartet Tzadik 9318-2 (reviewed as 24/96 WAV). 2025. JACK Quartet, Ryan Streber, prods.; Streber, Scott Hull, engs. Performance ***** Sonics ****½

For one of the wildest and most unpredictable rides you may ever take, skip the Ferris wheel and racetrack and take John Zorn's eight string quartets for a spin. Beginning with Cat O'Nine Tails (1988) and ending with Zorn's last quartet (so far at least), The Unseen: music for the temple (2017), the JACK Quartet's John Zorn: The Complete String Quartets promises to simultaneously pull you in and send you flying.

Take Zorn's oft-hilarious Cat O'Nine Tails. Starting off a bit like Black Angels, George Crumb's famed anti–Vietnam War quartet, but with entirely different intent, Zorn begins with a screech. His sounds, however, invoke images of a cat dashing madly down a corridor and colliding into walls. The music grows by turns cautious, wary, and poised, sometimes invoking ancestral memories of Looney Tunes on acid as it jumps from mad dash to square dance to crash to Viennese waltz to droll suspense. Though Zorn claims that his is "not music for entertainment," Cat O'Nine Tails is one of the most entertaining string quartets I've ever heard. Kudos to the JACKs for their abundant variations of timbre and texture and to engineer Ryan Streber for capturing every random sound with clarity.

Lest I mislead you: Many of Zorn's quartets are deeply serious. The deep and all-abiding sorrow at the core of his Kol Nidre is moving. The final quartet, The Unseen, is a nine-part, 13-minute wonder inspired by the philosophies and spiritual art of Hilma af Klint, as seen in a 2018 Klint retrospective at New York's Guggenheim Museum.

Where Charles Ives patched together snatches of spirituals, marches, and other fragments of the New England experience, Zorn jumps from one sizzling brain cell to another. Amazing, powerful, deeply inspiring stuff.—Jason Victor Serinus

Lassus: Penitential Psalms
Cappella Amsterdam/Daniel Reuss Pentatone Music PTC5187066 (CD). Florian B. Schmidt, prod.; Christoph Binner, eng. Performance ***** Sonics *****

I'd never have suspected from the offhand attention given to Lassus that he was, among Renaissance composers, forward-looking. His textures are unusually varied. Answering an upper part with three lower ones is practically a period trope, but Lassus also voices chords in just part of the range, like different orchestral choirs. The occasional two-part counterpoint, the other parts tacent, adds to the aural variety.

The rhythmic schemes are also ambitious. Like some of his contemporaries, Lassus sets off his predominantly duple scansions with brief three-beat passages, like a waltz. This lightens the musical and emotional effect while varying the forward motion. So do a number of cadential feints, which "resolve" in unexpected directions while underlining important bits of text.

That such diverse musical elements register so strongly is a tribute to the quality of the performances. From the first firm, vibrato-free note, we know these will be forthright renderings. The 15-voice mixed chorus is impeccably tuned and balanced, maintaining legato in their brief melismas. Exemplary enunciation allows us to catch the text among the moving parts. The pronunciation is inconsistent: "configitur" gets a soft g, "magna" a hard one; there's a Germanic "iniqvitatem," and mihi with a k.

Reuss and company, in full command of the rhythmic pivots, reach their expressive peak in the seventh psalm, Domine, exaudi orationem meam ("Lord, hear my prayer"), with its emphatic homophonic cry for help. The three lower voices produce a beautiful, organlike blend. Strong accents stress "in me turbatum est cor meum" ("my heart is troubled"); "defecit spiritus meus" ("my spirit has fainted") is highlighted by a short silence. The closing Gloria Patri is reverent.

The engineers somehow contrive a direct, immediate vocal presence within a warm ambience.—Stephen Francis Vasta

Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé
London Symphony Orchestra, Tenebrae/Sir Antonio Pappano LSO Live LSO0089 (CD). 2025. Stephen Johns, prod.; Neil Hutchinson, eng. Performance **** Sonics ***½

Pappano's reading of Daphnis, not inappropriately for a dance score, is marked by an overall lightness—not an affected lightness but a natural, balletic one. Tempi don't stray far from the norms, but the conductor infuses accompanying rhythmic patterns with an undulating shape and dancelike lift. The end of Part I, while pretty, feels amorphous, but then that's true in many performances. The rising violin lines of Daybreak are nicely aspirational; the end of the scene feels a bit rushed, but then the solo flute has plenty of time in a spacious Pan and Syrinx Pantomime.

All that isn't to suggest a lack of energy where it's required. The staccato trumpets in Part II are crisp and clean, and the two vigorous, incisive Danses générales go with fine propulsion. Trenchant bassi project a stark Danse guerrière.

The LSO plays handsomely for Pappano, with the focused, expressive principal horn in the opening and the dusky cellos a bit later giving particular pleasure. Tenebrae's clear, blended choral vocalises set the bittersweet solo violin in fine relief. The chordal trombone glissandos, while restrained, are effective.

Here and there, some rhythmic imprecisions get by. A few landings, especially of chords involving high strings, are nebulous; the lovely, liquid clarinet runs of Part II keep creeping ahead of the beat. Other flaws are sins of omission: The shapely violin lines, the sensitively inflected woodwind phrasing, all gesture towards a sensuousness that's never quite achieved. The flute duet that begins the Danse légère et gracieuse is tender rather than truly delicate.

At my preferred playback level, the climaxes of Part I hardened, with an edgy treble. Otherwise, perspectives within the orchestra, and between orchestra and chorus, are excellent.—Stephen Francis Vasta