Lucien Durosoir (1878 – 1955) is a French composer and violinist who studied with Joachim and Hugo Heermann in Germany, and gave noted premieres of many famous violin works by equally famous composers. During WWI he was encouraged to found a string quartet that included his mentor, Andre Caplet. After 1919 he composed for the next 30 years, and while not exactly prolific, his music has a concentrated power and inherent drama that has hints of Debussy, Wagner, and mostly, Ravel, though without the streamlined classical consensus that informs most of that composer’s music.
The three string quartets were composed over a 14 year period, and one can easily see the composer’s development during this time, though I would concede that what we hear in the earliest of these works is present in cell form in the latest as well. These are all intensely focused pieces with a sense that no notes are wasted; everything he writes has meaning, and one comes away from these works feeling that you get your money’s worth from an hour’s worth of listening, with nothing superfluous thrown in to waste your time. I am not saying that these pieces inspired that same kind of immediate gratification and even love that the quartets of the above “impressionists” command; but given time and enough repeated hearings, there are lots of things to seduce your emotions and cause you to return to these pieces again and again, always finding something new each time.
The Diotima Quartet is as new to me as this composer, and they play with fire and flair, completely comfortable with the composer as with that of Beethoven. The sound that Alpha provides is wonderfully resonant, and I can’t think of a better way to spend money when looking for a discovery.
— Steven Ritter
