Quartetto Prometeo: Reinventions

Reinventions
    
Artist: Quartetto Prometeo, Stefano Scodanibbio
Genre: Classical
Label: ECM New Series

If you know anything of the music of the Italian double-bassist and composer Stefano Scodanibbio (1956-2012), you'll know he had a special fondness for the flutey, whistling sound of string harmonics. His arrangement of three movements of Bach's Art of Fugue and groups of Spanish guitar pieces (by Tárrega, Llobet, Aguado and Sor) and Mexican songs (traditional and popular) are not only flecked with octave displacements, but are also extraordinarily distended in tempo to allow time for the harmonics to sound and register fully. The process is fascinating if borderline perverse, even in the hands of the excellent Quartetto Prometeo. Don't think of them as arrangements – reinvention is definitely the right word. url.ie/7ebo

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan

Michael Dervan is a music critic and Irish Times contributor