New music in the paradise garden
Gaston Bachelard's image of an ecstatic paradise garden is linked with the Buddhist vision of the pure land , a state of mind beyond suffering where there is no grasping, in Jonathan Harvey's Fourth String Quartet. Dating from 2003, the Fourth Quartet uses electronics to explore spectralism , the deconstruction and manipulation of sound as an abstract medium to expose what the composer describes as : 'the materiality of the sound itself... the ‘suchness’ – to use a Buddhist term – the ‘thing in itself’: the grain, the richness, the quality of the sound'. The Fourth Quartet is available in a 2 CD set and audio download of Jonathan Harvey's complete string quartets and trio performed by the Arditti Quartet on the French Aeon label . This survey of the composer's quartets was, in my opinion, one of the highlights of 2009's new releases. The recordings were made in the studios of Südwestrundfunk Baden Baden and the electronics for the Fourth Quartet were p