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BEN JOHNSTON: String Quartets Nos. 6, 7, & 8—Kepler Quartet—New World

by Audiophile Audition | Jun 6, 2016 | Classical CD Reviews

A challenging new musical language for modern music lovers. BEN JOHNSTON: String Quartets Nos. 6, 7, & 8—Kepler Quartet—New World 80730-2, 66:43 [Distr. by Albany] ****: As difficult and dangerous as it is to climb Mt. Everest, people do it because it’s there. Ben Johnston’s String Quartet No. 7 (1984) is known among string players and ‘experts’ as the most difficult string quartet to perform. According to a recent New York Times article, the Kepler Quartet has made it a cause over the past 14 years to learn and record all of the 10 quartets that Mr. Johnston has written. Now, 90, the composer lives in a farm outside of Madison, Wisconsin and is in failing health. The Kepler Quartet has been so dedicated to finish the project that they rehearsed in a church close to Johnston’s farmhouse (“literally in the midst of a cornfield, in the midst of a cemetery”) so they could consult with him during rehearsals. What makes Johnston’s quartets so difficult to perform is that he inserts microtones “into the grid of the twelve pitch scale” that is a standard of tuning for normal intervals of the octave scale. Johnston calls it ‘just intonation’ tuning. The system […]