String Quartets Nos. 2, 3 & 4  The American String Quartet Z6789 “I may have become known as a composer of large, 'public' works for orchestra,” Richard Danielpour has said, “but my string quartets are something completely different. They are the place where I am alone with my thoughts.” Mr. Danielpour's music has been much in demand, thanks to his coloristic gifts, his frank and direct way of communicating, and, lately, a sense of “roots” that comes from the music and literature of Persia, the land of his ancestors. As with Beethoven, Schubert, and Dvorak, to name a few, he turns to chamber music as an intimate sphere in which to develop his ideas among friends. Furthermore, the descriptive rides of the works on this recording - “Shadow Dances,” “Psalms of Sorrow,” and “Apparitions” - all suggest a kind of “insubstantial pageant” of shadows on a cave wall, music of a more spiritual than concrete character. Born in 1956, Mr. Danielpour is in that generation of American composers who grew up during the high tide of serialism in the academy and music schools, and reached his majority just as the tide was turning - or rather, not so much turning as dividing into many currents, presenting a young composer with a bewildering variety of choices. Mahler? Shostakovich? The minimalists? The Beades? These are just a few of the influences Mr. Danielpour has acknowledged in his music. … - David Wright David Wright is the former Program Annotator of the New York Philharmonic.
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