arditti quartet: s/d

- all of their recordings of the second viennese school (unsurpassed, imho, except maybe in berg's lyric suite - kronos are strong contenders, as well as the prazak and alban berg quartets)
- luigi nono's "fragmente - stille, an diotima / 'hay que caminar,' sonando"
- wolfgang rihm's quartets nos. 3, 5 & 8
- scelsi's complete quartets / trio / khoom
- carter's complete quartets + various chamber works
- "from scandinavia," pieces by lindberg, saariaho, tiensuu and sorensen
- "arditti one," featuring the best possible performance of beethoven's "grosse fuge"
- ligeti's 2 quartets
- berio's complete quartets

destroy: nothing, really. their tone is a little too clinical for some works, but that occasionally works to their advantage, depending on the mood you're in. but if you're interested in the composer more than the performance (which you should be!), i can think of 3 specific exceptions:

- keller quartet for kurtag's "officium breve"
- takacs quartet for bartok's 4th
- kronos quartet for schnittke's 2nd

and that's that. i've never heard of a quartet as consistent as the ardittis.

destroy: stockhausen's "helikopter-streichquartet"

intellectual bombast, belonging in pitchfork's "wtf" category

Especially since they just recorded it on the ground and overdubbed helikopter noises. Lame.

The Arditti's 2cd set of Xenakis' chamber music, with Claude Helffer joining them on piano, is another one to search.

I didn't even see this the first time - found it when searching for stuff on Berg. prob do a thread on him.

I'd like to add harrison birtwistle's 'pulse shadows' (disc is on teldec) for str quartet/ensemble and soprano - saw them performing it last november and it was a great great evening.

I saw that stockhausen CD a cpl of days ago but decided against it (have enough stockhausen really, didn't feel like it). is it that the composition is awful or the performance? or, haha, both?