Works for string quartet
by Romano Crivici, 1998
Artwork used in cover design: Rudolf Crivici.
Sitting here, late at night, listening to the recording and trying to think of what to write about it, I am struck at how, well …. clear, energetic, spontaneous and fresh the album seems. I am surprised…..!
Even though all the works are, technically speaking, ‘composed’, I always included sections for both individual and group improvisations, which, in retrospect I can now see really changed the way we approached our performance. In the state of heightened group consciousness that seems to occur in any real chamber music playing, we were taken that degree further when suddenly we found ourselves in the open space of the free sections; -a subtle lean here, a rhythmic move there, a sniff or obliquely sub-liminal smile, as we moved past our (always very) individual different personalities and found ourselves…speaking, being as one voice….. and then there were the transitions back to the written material, which seem so natural, seamless now, hard for even me to spot …
But who knows, maybe I am just biased, and experiencing the inevitable narcissistic self-reflection/recognition of the “creator through his works” syndrome, (often quite tragic when it grows unchecked over the years!) or maybe it is just simply the passage of years, as with certain memories, of experiences and stages of one’s life that has given it that golden glow, or ……maybe……maybe….
….but it does seem to be quite good, ……… well, at least to me…
R.C. 12th Feb 09
Elektra: Mirka Rozmus, the brothers Crivici and Peter Morisson
Review: “…from meditative ambience, through deeply beautiful passages, to abrasive improvisations which have an almost heavy metal edge…consistently imaginative and a very impressive debut.”
Reviewed in Rolling Stone, 1999, Leslie Sly
Product ‘endorsment’ seems to be implicit through Luminous appearing (illegally copied and available for free distribution) in various freeshare blogsites … I suppose I should be flattered by such acknowledgements from the digital underworld! 3rd May, 2010
| Track | Name & description | Time |
| 1 | Song Without Words | 5:06 |
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Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. Originally written as a short piece for two enthusiastic students during a violin lesson, it quickly became a quintet for a group of even more enthusiastic students a few weeks later! It has now emerged as a work for string quartet. |
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| 2+3 | String Quartet No. 1 | 19:33 |
| -Adagio – allegro – adagio (2 improvisational sections in the allegro) -Adagio – allegro molto – adagio Written in the late hours of the evening, and early hours of the morning, interspersed with long nocturnal walks…I looked at the sleeping Sydney skylines and pondered the meaning of it all… |
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| 4 | Journey to the Mythical Place | 3:12 |
| Simple tunes, simple harmonies….getting to the ‘mythical place’ requires of us a letting go, of complicated adult thinking, goals and fearful sense of separation from it all… | ||
| 5 | String Quartet No. 2 Mov’t I | |
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Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. |
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| 5+6 | String Quartet No 2 | 19:00 |
| Movements I and 2: allegro – adagio – allegro/ allegro (groove section with improvisations)
Movement 3 –“Cosmic Dust” -driving rhythms, brutal grooves, rising and subsiding….. contrasting with loosely structured material – static, moving….and then, the final dissolution into the Adagio- “cosmic dust’…. “Beyond the orbits of the outer planets, way past Neptune and Pluto, the dust takes an awfully long time to settle…yes…a long, long….long time” |
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| 7 | Hardware | 10:48 |
| This work came to exist in its present form thanks to the prodding of Rudolf (Crivici) and Mirka Rozmus. Originally envisaged as the middle movement of String Quartet No 1, it ended up as a work in it’s own right after they sensitively suggested -“you never write enough hard, up tempo, aggro music….expand it! let’s electrify it…come on man, we need something dynamic for the next concert” (It was premiered a few weeks late, on the 5th March, 1993). | ||
| 8 | Landscapes | 7:08 |
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Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. -Andante – allegro (with improvisations) chorale, -andante The initial idea for this work appeared as a short simple piece for string trio written for my young sister when she thought that she wanted to play the cello. A number of years later I developed the ideas and also added two sections for improvisation…and so, like the many changing faces of Australia itself, each performance of this work becomes a different musical ‘landscape’. |
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