NYMAN: String Quartets 1-3. Balanescu Quartet. Argo...

NYMAN: String Quartets 1-3. Balanescu Quartet. Argo 433 093-2. Michael Nyman’s substantial quartets, composed between 1985 and 1990, share an energy generated by the friction of abstracted architectural and harmonic patterns with an improvisatory sense of melody and interpretive touch. He skillfully manipulates prior materials--a set of virginal variations and a Schoenberg snippet in No. 1, rhythmic cycles from Bharata Natyam dance for No. 2, and Romanian folk songs and one of Nyman’s own choral pieces in No. 3--but drives them with the pure pulse-power of an unreconstructed minimalism. Which is not to say Nyman is incapable of lyricism, and the Balanescu performances demonstrate the songfulness of these scores as deftly as they expose the structural logic and tweak the manic edges of jittery iteration.