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During the course of its two movements, between its opening elegiac duet and the four players' communal closing, Joelle Wallach's String Quartet 1999 unveils a vivid inner universe. Its epigram, taken from a poem by Delmore Schwartz, "In the slight ripple, the mind perceives the heart," suggests the nature of the music's emotional progress: beneath soaring melodies, tiny rivulets of melodic material merge and gather, forming ever new, rushing rivers of personal passion. A poignant tenderness gives way to agitation, terror, yearning, hope and transcendence. Twice, a brave, heavy-footed little dance prickly with the bravura slapstick of responsive, swooping portamenti interrupts; and twice it is subsumed into the work's overarching, darker texture.

String Quartet 1999 was commissioned by the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music for the Muir Quartet.

NOW AVAILABLE ON DISC!

Capstone Records (CPS-8689)
Shadow, Sighs and Songs of Longing: Music for Strings including
       String Quartet (1986)
       String Quartet (1995)
       String Quartet 1999
       Shadow, Sighs and Songs of Longing, a concerto for cello and orcehstra
Featuring the Meridian Quartet, and the National Slovak Radio Orchestra, Joel Suben conductor and Robert DeMaine, cello soloist.