Simon Christensen has an eclectic musical background, but the string quartet has been central to his output. Decades of work with the genre has resulted in deeply moving works that have reshaped perceptions of what music for string quartet can be. His most recent quartet EKSTASIS was written for and recorded by the forward-thinking NeoQuartet from Poland, dedicated to reimagining the boundaries of the string quartet tradition.
Now EKSTASIS is released as a digital album by Dacapo Records.
EKSTASIS is a work with a seductive power entirely its own. Christensen paints a clear picture from a mass of detail, at once meditative and ferocious, and draws us into the new sound dimension he has found in the string quartet.
Distortions and displacements
All the way through, the four instruments can appear to be in a state of constant development towards new horizons or a passport to the next viable soundscape. The gradual process takes the musicians into different terrains, from light swaying dances and introspective, glacial chords to rattling noisy sections comprised of brutal, blade-like grestures from bowed strings.
The whole is spiked by a feeling of awry tuning derived from the instruction to tune two of each instrument’s strings down by one eighth of a tone. Rhythmically, Christensen also works with distortions and displacements, which give the impression of the music momentarily gusting into a higher velocity or being weighted into a lower one – its metre compressed and then expanded – thus altering our perception of rhythmic progress and of time itself.
Find more information and listen to the album here.
Find the score for EKSTASIS here.
