Borusan Quartet - Company: Arvo Part, Hasan Ucarsu, Philip Glass, Peteris Vasks (2017)

Posted By: Designol

Date: Feb. 9, 2023

Of four living composers here, one is less well known. Like the Borusan Quartet itself, Hasan Uçarsu (born 1965) is Turkish. His String Quartet No 2 “The Untold” consists of two short, pensive outer movements – called epilogue and prologue – and two questing, energetic central movements full of Anatolian folk inspiration. Arvo Pärt’s Summa is a string version of a meditative vocal piece from 1977. Pēteris Vasks, like Pärt, found his own spiritual voice within or despite the restrictive Soviet aesthetic, as witnessed in his poignant String Quartet No 4. Philip Glass, in contrast, wrote his Quartet No 2, robustly minimalist, as stage music for an adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s novel Company. A fascinating, engagingly played quartet of quartets.

Review by Fiona Maddocks, The Guardian

This is a delectable programme on paper but, when you come to listen, it can feel a little thin. An introduction to the booklet note maps out the history of the quartet post-Beethoven in which the big guns, naturally, are Bartók and Shostakovich. I can’t help thinking this offering would have been a whole lot more satisfying if one of the pieces featured were replaced one of theirs.

But which one? The Borusan Quartet underline their Turkish identity with a work by their compatriot Hasan Uçarsu, which also works well with the String Quartet No 4 by Pēteris Vasks (the language isn’t a million miles away and both composers use indigenous music as a reference point), even if the Turk doesn’t quite have the Latvian’s freshness and focus (the second movement of The Untold rambles).

Vasks’s quartet, almost half an hour in duration and the composer’s most heart-rending, is unquestionably the main course. This performance stands in contrast to that from the work’s commissioner, the Kronos Quartet, and in so doing sets out the Borusan’s stall: they play with exceptionally tight blend and are consistently rooted, knowing where they are going and heading there without histrionics. In comparison with Kronos’s performance, the quartet’s two Toccatas feel tame – stories told rather than lived through – while the fiendish final movement, 10 minutes of sustained tension in largely static music, doesn’t quite set the hairs on end despite the Borusan’s feeling for it.

So that leaves Glass’s Company, in which the Borusan’s very clean reading of the score torpedoes it – is that really all that happens in this piece? In contrast, the ensemble’s accomplished plainness of tone in Pärt’s Summa only reinforces that work’s musical value. Either way, we’re hearing a fine quartet here, and one whose idea of how to make (and make up) a record clearly has potential.

Review by Andrew Mellor, Gramophone

Borusan Quartet Website

Borusan Quartet

Esen Kıvrak, 1st violin
Olgu Kızılay, 2nd violin
Efdal Altun, viola
Çağ Ercag, violoncello

Tracklist:

Arvo Pärt (b. 1935)

01. Summa 4.38

Hasan Uҫarsu (b. 1965)

String Quartet No.2, ‘The Untold’
02. I. Prologue 2.14
03. II. Bozlak (In memory of Neşet Ertaş) 7.53
04. III. Karşılama 5.17
05. IV. Epilogue (In memory of Reyent Bölükbaşı) 3.25

Philip Glass (b. 1937)

String Quartet No.2 ‘Company’
06. i ♩ = 96 2.28
07. ii ♩ = 160 1.45
08. iii ♩ = 96 1.44
09. iv ♩ = 160 2.13

Peteris Vasks (b. 1946)

String Quartet No.4
10. Elegy 7.35
11. Toccata I 2.57
12. Choral 6.38
13. Toccata II 4.09
14. Meditation 10.41

EAC log

Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 4 from 7. December 2014

EAC extraction logfile from 28. January 2018, 19:10

Borusan Quartet / Company

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Read mode : Secure
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Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
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Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 128 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : Yes
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Flac\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -T "COMMENT=Ripped by GFox" -V -8 %source%

TOC of the extracted CD

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Range status and errors

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Filename D:\Downloads\Borusan Quartet - Company.wav

Peak level 96.2 %
Extraction speed 1.7 X
Range quality 99.9 %
Test CRC 64C84C7A
Copy CRC 64C84C7A
Copy OK

No errors occurred

AccurateRip summary

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Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
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None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database

End of status report

==== Log checksum BEF3726019588E19B6D28DA1727A560F4BB36EAA7D7D741BB4A505DEF97BD0A0 ====

DR log

foobar2000 1.2 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1
log date: 2018-01-29 01:00:56

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Analyzed: Borusan Quartet / Company
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

DR Peak RMS Duration Track
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
DR13 -10.05 dB -26.69 dB 4:39 01-Part - Summa
DR14 -5.76 dB -23.83 dB 2:15 02-Ucarsu - String Quartet No.2 'The Untold' - I. Prologue
DR15 -1.27 dB -20.40 dB 7:54 03-Ucarsu - String Quartet No.2 'The Untold' - II. Bozlak
DR15 -0.33 dB -20.40 dB 5:17 04-Ucarsu - String Quartet No.2 'The Untold' - III. Karsilama
DR14 -6.20 dB -26.11 dB 3:26 05-Ucarsu - String Quartet No.2 'The Untold' - IV. Epilogue
DR10 -12.62 dB -28.69 dB 2:28 06-Glass - String Quartet No.2 'Company' - I
DR11 -3.66 dB -20.49 dB 1:46 07-Glass - String Quartet No.2 'Company' - II
DR13 -1.11 dB -23.39 dB 1:45 08-Glass - String Quartet No.2 'Company' - III
DR13 -9.64 dB -29.53 dB 2:14 09-Glass - String Quartet No.2 'Company' - IV
DR16 -6.30 dB -29.74 dB 7:35 10-Vasks - String Quartet No.4 - Elegy
DR14 -2.03 dB -19.01 dB 2:57 11-Vasks - String Quartet No.4 - Toccata
DR14 -4.30 dB -23.82 dB 6:38 12-Vasks - String Quartet No.4 - Choral
DR13 -2.57 dB -19.38 dB 4:10 13-Vasks - String Quartet No.4 - Toccata II
DR12 -16.71 dB -35.02 dB 10:41 14-Vasks - String Quartet No.4 - Meditation
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Number of tracks: 14
Official DR value: DR13

Samplerate: 44100 Hz
Channels: 2
Bits per sample: 16
Bitrate: 568 kbps
Codec: FLAC
================================================================================

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