AHMED ADNAN SAYGUN (1907-1991): String Quartet No. 1, ATAÇ SEZER (b.1979): Subject for String Quartet, Flow for String Trio, MATTHIAS PINTSCHER (b.1971): Study IV for "Treatise on the Veil" for String Quartet.

Description: Saygun's 1947 quartet is tonally based, with the modal inflections of Turkish folk music that one would expect from his extensive study of the subject, and a generally very Bartókian sound to the quartet writing, also to be expected in view of his close contact with the Hungarian composer. The work is a fine specimen of the western quartet tradition, with the folk influence seamlessly integrated into a convincing personal idiom. Some elements of Turkish tradition are also to be found in Sezer's vocabulary, but the younger composer has absorbed the performance techniques of the western avant garde, so microtones, unorthodox techniques and unusual harmonic timbres are to be found alongside conventional quartet writing. Pintscher's piece, after the painter Cy Twombly, also makes extensive use of extended techniques, noise textures and preparation of the instruments, the fragmentary utterances of the quartet 'veiled' by this accretion of textured material. Asasello Quartet.