Hallgató (Live)

Beautifully produced from a live concert by Manfred Eicher—the legendary co-founder of independent German record label ECM—Hallgató is part celebration, part commemoration. And it’s superbly brought to life by the Hungarian musicians here: guitarist Ferenc Snétberger and the Keller Quartett. The album opens with Snétberger’s own wonderfully approachable guitar concerto “In Memory of My People”, dedicated to his Sinti and Roma forebears. Elsewhere, Russian composer Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8 memorialises the victims of war and is a powerful centrepiece, while the programme ends with a perfectly curated sequence of shorter pieces. They include the original string quartet version of Barber’s “Adagio for Strings”, which provides moments of sweetness and joy. An album of palpable sincerity and intense emotion.