Despite the prominent placement of
John Corigliano's two short character pieces, the sentimental Snapshot: Circa 1909 (which is a rather literal interpretation of the cover photograph of the composer's father and uncle) and the quirky and brief string quartet A Black November Turkey (1995), are the disc's most compelling work, and the most likely to reward repeated listening. While this five-movement essay owes a considerable debt to many string quartets before it, and may possibly remind one of examples from
Béla Bartók's String Quartet No. 5 to
George Crumb's Black Angels, it is still identifiable as
Corigliano's work in its long-breathed melodies and sensuous application of color, and appreciable for its coherent form, transparent thematic evolution, and impressive range of extended techniques. But the most intriguing aspect of this album lies in the pairing of
Corigliano's work with the String Quartet No. 2 (1998) by his one-time student and rising composer
Jefferson Friedman. Putting these pieces side by side allows inquisitive listeners to compare the music of teacher and student, and to seek points of similarity, notably in their fresh uses of tonality and their eclectic juggling of styles. The performances by the
Corigliano Quartet are remarkably crisp and lively, and the ensemble's extraordinarily vivid timbres are reproduced with resonant fidelity by Naxos in these recordings from 2004.