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Hass - Love & Levity: String Quartet no.1, Piano Quartet | Sono Luminus SLE70043

Hass - Love & Levity: String Quartet no.1, Piano Quartet

£13.34

New Item

Label: Sono Luminus

Cat No: SLE70043

Barcode: 0053479704306

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Chamber

Expected Release Date: 5th December 2025

Item is currently due
5th December 2025.

Order now and we will ship as soon as available.

Contents

Works

Hass, Daniel

Piano Quartet
String Quartet no.1 'Love and Levity'

Artists

Daniel Hass (piano)
The Renaissance Quartet

Works

Hass, Daniel

Piano Quartet
String Quartet no.1 'Love and Levity'

Artists

Daniel Hass (piano)
The Renaissance Quartet

About

‘These two quartets were written in the summer of 2021. There was a pandemic going on, and I spent most of the summer in my apartment, reading books and feeling the momentum of life melting away in the heat.

‘Early that summer, I read Haruki Murakami’s first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, and in the introduction he tells an anecdote from a baseball game:

‘“In the bottom of the first inning, Hilton slammed Sotokoba’s first pitch into the left field for a clean double. The satisfying crack when the bat met the ball resounded throughout Jingu Stadium. Scattered applause rose around me and in that instant, for no reason and based on no grounds whatsoever, it suddenly struck me: I think I can write a novel.”

‘This story had an effect on me similar to the crack of the bat, as I’d never written concert music but had always wanted to.

‘My only idea of how to start composing was to improvise at the piano. There are parts of the piano quartet that are direct transcriptions of these sessions, such as the cadenza-like development section of the first movement. But even the most structured-sounding passages began as improvisations before being arranged into an almost naively typical sonata structure. The piano quartet, while clearly an “early” piece, introduced me to my own language, and got me addicted to composing.

‘I started writing Love and Levity, my first string quartet, immediately after finishing the piano quartet. The Renaissance Quartet wasn’t even really a thing yet, but I knew who I was writing it for. I consider the piece to be, at its core, Beethovenian: in its thematic and structural tautness, but even more so in its motion towards excess – staying on an idea for too long, playing something too fast or too slow, too quiet or too loud. The title came from this anachronistic romanticism, this desire to talk about big feelings, but always with a bit of humor, always a bit weird.

‘Jazz and contemporary songwriting are as important to this music as the classical tradition. The scherzo movement, “Hermit’s Waltz”, is a jazz piece, complete with a transcription of an actual solo taken by guitarist Jacob Drab. The outer movements feature chords, melodies, and instrumental techniques taken from American folk musics such as rock, bluegrass, and the blues. These musics are not only emblems of New York, the city I call home, but contain the DNA of virtually all contemporary music. I leave it to you to discover what any of that means, and how it all came out.’
– Daniel Hass

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