Radulescu: Piano Sonatas & String Quartets, Vol. 1

Featuring

Stephen Clarke
JACK Quartet
Horațiu Rădulescu

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Compositional Technique

The Fifth String Quartet uses a 'spectral scordatura' requiring complex retuning of open strings, and its music traverses seven different harmonic spectra.

Instruments

One of Radulescu's piano reinventions, where fine, rosined threads were woven through the strings, was called the 'Sound Icon' because it resembled a religious object.

Composition History

Radulescu's second piano sonata was commissioned in 1991 by the Ministry of Arts and Sciences in Baden-Württemberg for Freiburg pianist Ortwin Stürmer, twenty-three years after his first.

Composer's Artistic Vision

The second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth piano sonatas, as well as the fifth and sixth string quartets, are all inspired by the Tao te Ching of Chinese philosopher Lao tzu.

Compositional Technique

Radulescu 'reinvented' the grand piano in several stages, including turning it on its side and bowing its rosined strings, and retuning it spectrally.

Compositional Technique

In the Fifth String Quartet, inscriptions from the Tao te Ching determine sound production and performance techniques, with musicians shaping phrases based on the rhythm of the texts.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Horatiu Radulescu, the composer, conceived of sound as an 'endless ocean of vibrations' in his 'plasmatic music', contrasting with traditional music's discrete scale steps.