Music of the week: String Quartets

One of my favorite albums is Vedres Csaba és a Kairosz kvartett – Áldott Idő / Blessed Time. It was made by Hungarian pianist Csaba Vedres, who worked together with a string quartet. Their music taught me that string quartets playing alone, with a piano, or with any other instrument can do some fantastic music.

The band was founded by Csaba Vedres, who had a classical music education. Besides playing the piano, he also researched the topic of classical vs. popular music. And just like me, he does not like these categories. One of his examples was Trilogy from ELP, but that will be another story 🙂 This album sounds more like what we usually call classical music, but not completely. Csaba is one of the best rock pianists of Hungary and you can hear that from some of the songs. I could only find a single song from the album on YouTube, but luckily you can find the full album on TIDAL.

TIDAL: https://listen.tidal.com/album/27780222

You can also find the CD at the publisher http://perifericrecords.com/hun/catalogue.php?cont=artist&artist_id=1002, together with other albums from Csaba Vedres.

I must admit that I’m not a big Jethro Tull fan. However, seeing the album cover of “The String Quartets”, I became curious and listened to the album. I was quickly addicted to it. Many old Jethro Tull songs are rearranged for a String Quartet and of course for the flute. And best of all, most songs are purely instrumental.

TIDAL: https://listen.tidal.com/album/71409468

Another album, Silver Lining Suite, which I listened to because it was a piano and a string quartet was made by Hiromi, a Japanese piano player. She wrote the album during Covid. I quickly bought it and another one of her albums on HDtracks in maximum quality, and listened to the album many times. It is difficult to choose a favorite from the album, so let me just simply link the first song. Its title is typical to Covid: “Isolation”.

TIDAL: https://listen.tidal.com/album/199559675

Finally, listen to a piece from a string quartet without any additional instruments. The Sturcz-kvartett plays their arrangement of a song by Solaris, a progrock group. It is probably the least classical sounding of the four songs, showing that a string quartet can really play any kind of music. This song was played on the 40th anniversary of Solaris as part of an online concert, due to Covid. This song is only available on YouTube.

I really hope that the rest of the songs from that concert will be available online or on Blu-Ray!