Attacca Quartet: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
Tom Huizenga, November 18, 2016 Classical music observers say we re living in a golden age of string quartets. It s hard to disagree when you hear the vibrant young players in New York s Attacca Quartet. They revere the old school, having recently completed a performance cycle of all 68 string quartets by Joseph Haydn, the man who invented the genre. They also hunger for the new, exploring the music of three living composers each year in a project called Recently Added. One contemporary composer the group continues to champion is John Adams. The headbanging pulsations of Toot Nipple (titled after a character in an Annie Proulx story) contrast with the slippery and funky episodes in Alligator Adams has said he imagined such a creature waddling up and down the floors of Macy s department store. The two movements belong to John s Book of Alleged Dances from 1994. Next to Adams, Haydn sounds positively genteel, but you needn t look far to find the composer s own feisty side. Sunny skies sudd
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